Oh, Denmark. Do you remember how mighty you used to be?

Six of you made the top 20 in 2018, four the following year. For the past two years, however, zero. Not one.

Greatness, it seems, has left your country. And now, in a sense, so has your greatest ever team, too.

Due to a distinct lack of talent in the region, Astralis have chosen to go international. They’re expected to be signing phzy and ryu, keeping a hold of their Danish flag on HLTV by retaining HooXi, jabbi, and Staehr.

It’s sad, but ultimately it’s for the best. With device gone — and bad enough himself — there really wasn’t a Danish AWPer Astralis could have gone for. A stavn AWP arc would have excited us, but beyond that the options are nicoodoz or acoR. Neither of which fill us with joy.

They could have gone for regali (who does speak Danish) and sirah, but maybe they got to sirah too late, or maybe they just think holding themselves to one nation is probably what stops them from being good.

Whichever one it is, we actually quite like who they’ve picked up. ryu enjoyed a solid 2025 with Monte and phzy has been due a true tier one call up for a long time, both players should be able to elevate the team.

But elevate them to what level exactly? Well, that part we aren’t sure of.

There’s still a lot more to come from jabbi, and we’re still not 100% convinced on Staehr being the star of a team with any real ambition. phzy is good, but he feels more like a floor raising AWPer than a ceiling raiser. ryu will have to adapt to tier one fast.

A lot of question marks. A massive gamble. The Gigachad will have his work cut out for him with this one.