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Losing two star players from a Major-winning roster is disastrous, but the C9 core stuck it out, rebuilt and now look to defend their championship in London.
Go back to January and Tyler ‘Skadoodle’ Latham, Timothy ‘autimatic’ Ta and Will ‘RUSH’ Wierzba were on top of the world. They were Major champions, having defeated FaZe in easily the greatest grand final of any Major, and it was on home soil. For professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players, things don’t get much better than that.
But the past few months have been rough. Long-time team member Jake ‘Stewie2K’ Yip left the team shortly after to join the legendary Brazilian roster now known as MIBR, and then not too long after that Tarik ‘tarik’ Celik joined him. This meant that the defending Major champions were down two players, and were forced to rebuild.
“It was definitely a rough transition period because you go from winning the Major to having to rebuild and when you're rebuilding, you're not gonna play well, so it was really rough at the start,” says autimatic. “If I'm being honest, the thought of having to rebuild was definitely something that I wasn't looking forward to. I was very upset about it and I felt really stressed but after talking to C9, talking to my team-mates and my coach and everyone, after a couple of weeks I really was looking forward to the challenge.”
Unfortunately the rebuild didn’t quite start out as C9 had hoped. With Stewie gone but Tarik still in the team, they recruited Pujan ‘FNS’ Mehta to be the new in-game leader. However, the results were poor and it seemed like they just couldn’t make it work with FNS at the helm, which ultimately lead to even more turnover in players.
“I wish people would have stayed more patient, but that's the way of the world, you can't always have things the way you want them to turn out,” says RUSH. “So Stew leaving and Tarik leaving were definitely blows to me, Tim, and Tyler, but we made the best of it and tried to make it work. When Stew left we picked up FNS and that did not work out, we weren't improving that well. It just wasn't a good fit, and then after that, Tarik was kind of, I think he was distraught that we were never improving and I think he left for that reason. So, from that mistake to him leaving was the compounding thing that led to having no team, really, just me Tyler and Tim.”
FNS was swiftly benched, and Cloud9 were back to looking for new players. With Tarik heading over to MIBR they needed two new players, and with FNS benched, they were also lacking an in-game leader. To make matters worse this all happened in the middle of the season, and with the next Major just a couple of months away, most teams already had settled rosters and there just weren’t many free agents available.
“I definitely wish Tarik would have left either right after ELEAGUE or during the player break or after the Major,” says RUSH. “He told us that he would stay until that time, but he decided just to leave, then at that point and that put us in a really difficult spot because everyone was set. So we had really limited options at that point, and I think we got fortunate that Maikil ‘Golden’ Selim was available and that he was willing to join, and come to LA instantly. That was very fortunate so we got lucky in that respect.”
The two players C9 settled on were Fnatic’s former in-game leader Golden, who lead them to victory at IEM Katowice earlier in the year, and Martin ‘’STYKO’ Styk, who is still technically playing as a stand-in on loan from mousesports. There’s little doubt that with the free agents available at the time, C9 picked the best of the bunch, and leading into the FACEIT Major the team seemed confident.
“I think Styko is a really good player and we're kind of seeing how the rules fit with him right now, and Golden is a leader that we really wanted,” says autimatic. “We didn't really know too much about him, but after talking to him and having some meetings and also after him playing with us at ELEAGUE, he's a great leader, one of the best leaders I've ever played with so he's definitely a player that we wanted.”
Despite technically being the defending champions, C9 do not go into the tournament as one of the favorites. This roster is still somewhat unproven and with only a few weeks together some question how deep their map pool and strategies can be compared to the teams that have been together for months or even years. However, the three players who are defending their championship know this is their chance to make history, and they have all put everything into rebuilding this team.
“Actually, one of my steps to rebuilding was I had to quit Fortnite so I haven't played in a couple of months,” says autimatic. “I don't think it negatively impacted me, like in terms of skill or anything like that, but it was used to clear my mind from CS. Now I don't think I'm in a position where I can have a clear mind. I always have to be thinking about the team or whatever. I want to be fully immersed in CS so that is one of the steps that I took.”
There’s no doubt that this has been a tough time for everyone involved. Going from winning the biggest tournament in the scene, to almost not having a team to defend your championship next time out, is not easy for anyone. But C9 have bounced back, they have a solid roster, and as they proved last time out, anyone can win a Major with a good run.
“Maybe in a very lowest point, I said to myself, maybe I should just leave at this point, but I didn't actually want to leave,” says RUSH. “I was just kind of like, man, what do we do at this point? We have no players. That was maybe just in one point, but I think for the most part I did stay pretty optimistic. I guess it's impossible to be fully optimistic all the time when all this happens, but I've been doing my best. I wanted stay in Cloud9 for as long as I can. I wanna make this roster great for as long as I can.”
