G2 Esports’ VALORANT roster is now complete for the upcoming VCT Europe Stage Three. The organization has brought in Cista “keloqz” Wassim to be its fifth player, G2 announced today. Jacob “pyth” Mourujärvi has been benched and will be allowed to pursue other opportunities.
The news comes one week after French website 1pv.fr reported that keloqz was going to replace pyth. The former CS:GO player reportedly didn’t adapt to G2’s new VALORANT lineup after all the roster changes the organization made in early June—replacing Patryk “paTiTek” Fabrowski, Ardis “ardiis” Svarenieks, and Aleksander “zeek” Zygmunt to sign Auni “AvovA” Chahade, Ĺ˝ygimantas “nukkye” Chmieliauskas, and Jose Luis “koldamenta” Aranguren—which affected his individual level of play. The team reportedly concluded that it’d be better if pyth and the squad went their separate ways.
With pyth out of the starting lineup, the captain Oscar “mixwell” Cañellas is now the only player remaining from G2’s original VALORANT lineup that was signed in June 2020. The Swedish player helped the international team win tournaments in the early stages of the competitive scene, such as WePlay! Invitational, Allied Esports Odyssey, BLAST Twitch Invitational, and Red Bull Home Ground. But G2 failed to translate that form to VCT events and didn’t qualify for the VCT Masters Two ReykjavĂk.
Keloqz, on the other hand, is an 18-year-old French player who was last seen playing for Megastitut, a non-sponsored team that he helped win the VALORANT Open Tour France Spring qualifier over bigger teams such as Vitality and EXCEL. He put up some impressive performances in the tournament and finished with a 1.46 K/D, the highest at the event.
“I am happy to announce that I have found my new home, joining G2 is a great honor for me to represent this organization,” keloqz wrote on Twitter. “I will give my all to take this team as far as possible.”
The 18-year-old is a main duelist and used Jett in 87.5 percent of his matches recorded on VLR.gg. Jett is also mixwell’s favorite agent, but it’s likely that the Spanish in-game leader will let keloqz play with Jett and will take pyth’s sentinel role on some maps, at least in some of their initial tournaments. Mixwell was consistently one of G2’s best players on the old lineup, so we’ll have to see if he can adapt his playing style to accommodate keloqz joining the team.
The VCT Europe Stage Three Challengers One open qualifier will kick off on Monday, June 28. G2 will have to beat some tough opponents to qualify for the closed qualifier, where teams such as Fnatic and Team Liquid await.
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