Aleksi “Aleksib” Virolainen, a top-10 CS:GO in-game leader, will be responsible for guiding G2 this year after spending the past two years of his career on OG.
The Finnish tactician will work with the cousins Nikola “NiKo” Kovač and Nemanja “huNter-” Kovač, plus the young star Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov, who joined G2 earlier this year following impressive showings with Natus Vincere’s academy team in 2021. Rounding out the roster is the rifler Audric “JACKZ” Jug and new head coach Rémy “XTQZZZ” Quoniam.
Despite Aleksib’s tactical prowess, he couldn’t guide OG to a tier-one championship during his stint with the team. He’ll have to make it work on G2, though. The organization hasn’t lifted a big CS:GO trophy since DreamHack Masters Malmö in 2017 and came close to breaking the curse in 2021 when they finished as the runners-up at three notable events—IEM Katowice, IEM Cologne, and PGL Stockholm Major—losing to a fearless Na’Vi all three times. It was the players involved in G2’s project that convinced Aleksib to change from one international squad to another.
“I had good time to think about everything, and in the end I thought it would be stupid of me not to make the move,” Aleksib said in an interview with HLTV. “The players I heard would be playing for this team, overall I thought if this window closes and something goes wrong with OG the next couple of months or anything, or we just somehow don’t get the ball rolling, I would most likely regret it.”
The 24-year-old has been labeled by the community as an in-game leader who likes to micromanage his players, especially after a retake attempt from OG in BLAST Premier went viral. Aleksib, though, assures he’s not coming to G2 to change everything and will make NiKo and huNter- feel comfortable on the server.
Aside from the Balkan cousins, Aleksib is also counting on m0NESY’s talent to make the team play as good as he envisions on paper. “We know that we need to use m0NESY to his potential to make sure he can shine,” Aleksib said. “And if we can get these three pieces rolling [NiKo, huNter-, and m0NESY], and me and Jackie [JACKZ] kind of being the supportive/entry/adaptive roles, I don’t see why this couldn’t work to the potential that I see on paper.”
G2’s debut with m0NESY, Aleksib, and XTQZZZ will happen on Friday, Jan. 28 at BLAST Premier Spring Groups against Complexity.
