FaZe CS:GO missing 2 key pieces for first tournament of 2023

FaZe Clan will attend 2023 BLAST Premier Spring Groups without one of their star riflers, rain, and head coach Robert “RobbaN” Dahlström, the organization announced today. Neither should be away from the team permanently, however.

Rain will enter paternity leave as he’s expecting the birth of his first child and will return to FaZe’s active CS:GO lineup “as soon as possible.” The organization will reveal his temporary replacement on Friday, Jan. 20 ahead of the team’s opening match versus Complexity at BLAST Premier Spring Groups.

As for RobbaN, he’s missing the $177,500 tournament due to a personal matter. The Swedish coach, though, plans to return next week or ahead of IEM Katowice (Jan. 31 to Feb. 12) “at the very latest”. It’s unclear if FaZe will use the analyst Vyacheslav “innersh1ne” Britvin in place of RobbaN like they did in the past.

There had been rumors that rain was due to take a break this year because of the birth of his child, but it wasn’t confirmed until today. It isn’t good news for the FaZe camp as he was one of their best players last year, helping them to win multiple events including the PGL Antwerp Major in May.

BLAST Premier Spring Groups is a tournament with only BLAST partners that will see six squads advance to the Spring Final in the first half of 2023, while the remaining six will have to attend the Spring Showdown and compete for spots in the Spring Final against non-partnered teams from all over the world.

At the moment, there are no reports on who is replacing rain on FaZe and how long he’ll be out of karrigan’s team. Some fans, though, think that k0nfig will be the stand-in after he and karrigan interacted on Twitter today.