MAD Lions has moved its CS:GO captain, Nicolai “HUNDEN” Petersen, to the bench, according to a report by HLTV.
The in-game leader has reportedly been removed due to internal issues. MAD Lions attended IEM Katowice last week and were eliminated in the early stages of the competition. With this decision, the Danish team will have to quickly sign a new player since they’re scheduled to play in the Europe Minor closed qualifier in two days against Sprout.
HUNDEN had been playing for MAD Lions since January 2019 when the team was still playing for Tricked. He helped the squad win the V4 Future Sports Festival in September 2019, beating teams such as the Polish Virtus Pro lineup and MIBR to rise through HLTV’s world rankings. MAD Lions is ranked the 11th best CS:GO team in the world right now.
HUNDEN is historically known for building teams from scratch and developing young players. He said in an interview with HLTV that he was happy with the current setup of MAD Lions since he didn’t have to worry about losing his players to other Danish teams, such as North and Heroic.
MAD Lions are also one of the founding teams in FLASHPOINT, the newest CS:GO league. The first season of FLASHPOINT is scheduled to kick off on March 13, so they’ll likely struggle with this sudden roster change.
Update March 5 5:22pm CT: MAD Lions will replace HUNDEN with Asger “AcilioN” Larsen, according to DBLTAP.
