We’ve written at length (or indeed, at shorth. Because we’re TLDR. Never mind) at all the big teams making changes, but there’s a few interesting stories bubbling under the surface this week.

We actually interviewed Rejin from MAD Lions last year and he spoke a lot about building a roster for the future, nurturing talent and it being an ongoing project - and indeed, the project must go on, but it’s fair to have some concerns.

Woro2k and sausol were both benched, to many a raised eyebrow, and their replacement are the relative veterans of sdy and MICHU. Which... is a move away from what the team was, and into more of a recycler of discarded, undervalued talent.

Much like Brentford, they’ve given up on being an ‘academy’ and taken on the players who drop from better teams who still have room to grow. It’s a smart model, but requires a keen eye.

MAD have an interesting thing going, but... we don’t think they’ll be pulling up any trees. Woro2k was most of their firepower, and without him, we’re not certain this team has ‘it’.

SINNERS, similarly, lost their marquee AWPer, with Oskar leaving and being replaced by forsyy (us neither). oskar, we know him though. Apparently he got an offer from an unnamed European team that he couldn’t turn down.

Quite who wants to pay for a 30 year old Oskar has not been revealed, and we’re struggling to think of anyone it could be. Like, seriously. We can’t even joke about it. Sprout? fnatic if smooya isn’t re-signed?

NIP?

Tune in to this week's episode of Overtime on Inferno where your favorite hosts aizyesque and Logan Ramhap go deep on the biggest news in CS:GO:

• Why you should be excited for maden on ENCE
• How FURIA fell into the perfect move
• Where on earth Oskar could be going

Apparently, this is ‘funny’.

We’ll never understand Americans, or quite why heavily corporately sterilised jokes are the height of announcements, but it seems EG are running with CeRq, Brehze and the ex-C9 trio.

Ohhhh. Now we understand the joke.

It’s keeping CeRq on this team.

They’re, according to the linked CEO, ‘here to save NA CS’. Don’t get us wrong, Stewie, auti and RUSH are part of the reason NA CS even exists, but are they the future?

Supposedly - but we have our doubts. autimatic hasn’t played in a long time, and RUSH has spent a little while out the game. Brehze and CeRq spent the last year chilling out too, albeit they were playing the game, which leaves Stewie as the only known quantity.

We’re far more excited for the new Complexity team, which is playing its first tournament together next we-, uh, wait. That says Extra Salt?

Seems for one tournament that saucy quintet will be gaming under the ES moniker, due to ES having a spot at the tournament and not quite having their team ready. At least it’s the full roster, so Complexity get one look at the five together before they get their teeth into it.

Still - floppy, Grim, junior is a really nasty trio for any NA team, and we’d be surprised if this team wasn’t a much better team than the EG one pretty quickly.

Sorry, Cloud9 fans.

• It isn’t quite Ken and Barbie, but kennyS and AmaNEk are cooking something up according to neL.
• And Python might be a part of that, albeit neL hasn’t heard anything about it, so we don’t know if it’s trustworthy.
• Did you know flamie is only 24?! Yeah us neither. And apparently he’s just signed for a team that isn’t NAVI.
• There’s weird playing styles and then there’s this.
• It’s the “all I got was this lousy t-shirt”-season, so here are four quick ones: FalleN officially leaves Liquid, and so does Grim. autimatic is out of T1’s Valorant team, while junior finally leaves FURIA