Legendary Counter-Strike IGL gla1ve and veteran head coach Jakub “kuben” Gurczynski have officially signed with ENCE on Nov. 27. The duo will fill the spots left open by the departures of captain Marco “Snappi” Pfeiffer and coach Eetu “sAw” Saha on Nov. 26.
Gla1ve and kuben will be responsible for building on Snappi and sAw’s ENCE legacy which saw the team successfully switch from a Finnish roster to an international one in 2021. This poses a big opportunity for gla1ve as he spent the five past months on Astralis’ bench and hasn’t won a big LAN championship since December 2019. Kuben, on the other hand, recently helped tier-two team GamerLegion to finish top four at the BLAST Paris Major in May and has been unemployed since September.
“It’s an incredible opportunity for me,” gla1ve said in an official statement. “I feel very blessed to be on a team with so many amazing players. I have a lot of excitement going into this project as it’s a completely new environment for me, but also because we have so much stuff to dive into with Counter-Strike 2. I know what this team is capable of, and I love that I’m a part of that now!”
Snappi and sAw left ENCE as a solid top-five team in the world that most notably won the IEM Dallas in June, but they also led ENCE to multiple grand finals such as Gamers8 and IEM Cologne in August, and at ESL Pro League season 15 in April 2022.
Gla1ve was at his peak the best CS:GO IGL ever as he led Astralis to win four Major championships between 2017 and 2019, plus a number of other tier-one tournaments. Maybe this change of scenery will allow the Dane to reach the top once again as ENCE is a well-oiled machine. It’ll be his first time shot-calling in English at the highest level of competition, however.
ENCE will debut under gla1ve and kuben’s leadership this Wednesday, Nov. 29 against HAVU at the $200,000 tournament Elisa Masters Espoo in Finland.
