ENCE, one of the top five CS2 teams in the world, have bid farewell to leader Marco “Snappi” Pfeiffer and head coach Eetu “sAw” Saha on Nov. 26.
The Finnish organization offered contract extensions to both Snappi and sAw, but they decided to leave and pursue new opportunities elsewhere. Snappi is reportedly signing with Saudi organization Falcons for 2024, while it’s currently unclear where sAw will land next.
“For us, it’s now time for a change as both Eetu and Marco wanted to seek out new opportunities for themselves,” ENCE’s general manager Niklas “Willkey” Ojalainen said when their departures were announced. “We made it possible for both of them to continue with us and extend their contracts with us with great compensation. It was their own decision to make the change, and we honor that choice.”
Snappi and sAw helped ENCE transition from an all-Finnish project that was beyond its prime to a successful international lineup in 2021. Together, they notably won the IEM Dallas in 2023, and also finished as runners-up in several other tier-one tournaments like ESL Pro League season 15 in April 2022, IEM Cologne in August 2023, and Gamers8 in August 2023. Without a doubt, ENCE couldn’t have gotten so far without them as they built the roster that made ENCE a solid world-top-five team.
We’ll see what the future looks like for ENCE now that the organization has to replace two key members. There’s a rumor that the four-time Major champion gla1ve left Astralis on Nov. 22 to join ENCE alongside the former Virtus Pro and Apeks coach Jakub “kuben” Gurczyński, but news outlets haven’t confirmed it yet.
Until ENCE makes an official announcement, the team are down to just Guy “NertZ” Iluz, Paweł Dycha, Pavle “maden” Bošković, and Alvaro “SunPayus” Garcia.
