ENCE have gone from being one of the most exciting teams in the first semester of 2019 to one of the most disappointing CS:GO squads after swapping their former in-game leader Aleksib to sign the Finnish superstar sunNy in August 2019.
The Finnish team is going through its worst slump since the lineup was assembled in April 2018. ENCE have lost 13 of their last 15 matches. Some of the losses were to tier-two CS:GO teams, the tier that ENCE seems to be in right now. In the past, we’d expect the Finnish team to beat squads like Spirit and GODSENT.
ENCE’s win rate over the last three months is just 28.6 percent, according to HLTV’s statistics. If we go back further, ENCE have won 11 best-of-one or best-of-three series, lost 19, and tied two matches since allu took over the in-game leadership following Aleksib’s departure.
It seems like ENCE desperately needs to make a roster change to move forward in 2020. But who’s the player to cut? Allu, sunNy, and Jere “sergej” Jalo seem untouchable, so it’d probably be either Sami “xseveN” Laasanen or Jani “Aerial” Jussila.
Although xseveN has slightly worse numbers than Aerial over the past six months, he’s ENCE’s support. Aerial has never shined the same way he did at BLAST Pro Series Madrid in May 2019, when ENCE ended Astralis 31-game win streak on Nuke to win the tournament.
Even if ENCE choose to bench one of these players, it’d be hard to pick a proper replacement. There aren’t any well-known Finnish captains apart from Aleksib, who’s now playing for OG. So either allu will have to reinvent ENCE’s tactical system or another player would have to take over.
Will ENCE find their rhythm in time for the ESL One Rio Major in May? For now, they have to keep playing at ESL Pro League season 11. They’ll face Astralis tomorrow at 4pm CT.
