Today is the 2nd of July, meaning the Astralis core (Magisk, gla1ve, xyp9x, dupreeh and zonic) are free to speak to any team ahead of a possible $0 pre-contract agreement for January 2022.
Having so little time left on their deals also should open up the chance of a cut price deal this summer. Not that NiP managed to shave many zeros off of dev1ce’s buyout.
Astralis are having a car-boot sale – and most of Counter-Strike should be attending.
Ok, ok...
We'll even admit that they might have been a little bit more motivated before they won everything there is to win.
But it’s still Astralis. It’s the GOATs, with yellow ‘reduced to clear’ stickers on them.
FaZe surely need a role-playing rifler to upgrade Olof, and the gla1ve-zonic combo would improve every team on the planet.
There’s barely even a language barrier. Scandinavians speak better English than Brits do, and dev1ce has shown that Danes are willing to adapt to a similar-ish culture in Sweden.
Put it this way: when we enquired about what languages the Astralis players spoke, a Fnatic manager told us to delete our post and stop sniffing around. Psstt, dupreeh lived in Sweden for 2 years.
Of course, some of the core may stay in Astralis. That might even be fun – someone like dupreeh rebuilding Astralis à la Oskar or Hobbit, with Zonic standing behind them.
It’s all very uncertain at the moment, but the post-Cologne player break is shaping up to be as exciting as the event itself.
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