EG fails to sign star players for CS roster, set to play BLAST Fall Groups with underwhelming lineup
Evil Geniuses’ plans to move to Europe have fallen through and the organization will instead field four players from its secondary CS:GO roster—Colby “Walco” Walsh, Jeorge “Jeorge” Endicott, Paytyn “junior” Johnson, and Jadan “HexT” Postma—alongside veteran autimatic for the BLAST Premier Fall Groups in July.
EG was reportedly trying to sign Team Liquid’s franchise player EliGE, Natus Vincere’s star electroNic, the French veteran Audric “JACKZ” Jug, and the Russian AWPer Aleksandr “zorte” Zagodyrenko for the second semester of 2023 and consequently for CS2‘s launch, but the negotiations fell through on June 22.
With no time to seek alternatives due to BLAST Premier Fall Groups’ roster lock, EG scrambled a roster with four players from its secondary CS:GO project EG Black plus autimatic, and will remain in NA for now.
Familiar faces, new era.@valens (Director of Athletics)@TomRyan (Head Coach)@DamienMarcel (Strategic Coach)@WalcoCS @autimaticTV @1juniorcs @HexTCSGO @jeorgecs @RUSH
Hear more from Valens in an interview coming Monday with @dust2us. pic.twitter.com/40vow3XKJK
— Evil Geniuses CS (@EGCSGO) June 24, 2023
Out of the four players promoted to the main roster, junior is one with more experience in tier-one. He played for FURIA in 2021 and for Complexity in 2022, but couldn’t replicate the same performance he had in tier-two tournaments. HexT also has experience in tier one after playing for EG’s main roster between Aug. 2022 and April 2023, but was demoted to EG Black after poor individual showings.
On top of promoting the four EG Black players to the main roster, the organization will also field the coach Damien “maLeK” Marcel as the head coach for the BLAST Premier Fall Groups. The future of former head coach Daniel Vorborg is unclear.
Of course, EG could surprise everyone at BLAST Premier Fall Groups between July 13 to 23, but it’s more than likely that the organization will have yet another disappointing result due to fielding unproven players in a competition full of top teams. EG has become the laughing stock of CS esports throughout 2023 as the main team repeatedly failed in every tournament and even got outranked by EG Black in May.