ropz to miss Katowice?

IEM Katowice hasn’t even begun and FaZe fans are already suffering.

On Wednesday, less than a week before the beginning of the the biggest tournament of the year so far, FaZe’s newest acquisition ropz announced via Twitter that he has Covid and is symptomatic.

He additionally noted on Twitter that he had “started my quarantine to keep everyone safe” and noted that the first day he would be able to play would be the 19th, four days after the event begins. Well, at least there’s one former MOUZ player who cares about keeping other people safe.

Many fans initially expected olofmeister, who is still listed on FaZe’s HLTV roster as a sub, to be their fifth while ropz is sick but he confirmed early on Thursday that that was not the case.

As confirmed by FaZe later in the day, they’ll be bringing in Australian player jks, who is currently a benched player for Complexity and who has not played a pro match since last October.

It would be hard to argue that jks isn’t a big downgrade over ropz, who recently was FaZe’s top performer in the BLAST Premier Spring Groups, where he had a 1.28 rating.

The bigger question is if ropz is the only player to face this issue or if he is simply the first.  With Covid still running rampant in much of the world, Katowice could prove to be an example of what might happen at the Major in just a few months.

Meanwhile, FaZe will  have to see if they can even make it to the point when ropz could return without him, but if they do, they’re probably still one of the favorites to win the whole thing.