FaZe Clan has bench Jonathan ‘EliGE’ Jablonowski from the CS2 roster. He had been part of the team for the last eight months. North America-based organization has signed Betclic Apogee player Jakub ‘jcobbb’ Pietruszewski as a replacement.
Roster Changes and Strategic Moves
So far this year, this is FaZe Clan’s third roster change. The side had earlier benched AWPer Helvijs ‘broky’ Saukants back in May with an unexpected addition of Oleksandr ‘S1mple’ Kostyliev. During competitions like IEM Dallas and the BLAST.tv Austin Major, S1mple helped the team achieve a top-eight finish. Thus, following S1mple’s departure to join BC.GAME, broky rejoined in July to regain competitive momentum. After putting up a strong performance at IEM Cologne, the team were eliminated by Virtus.pro in the online stage of the BLAST Bounty Season 2.
FaZe Clan posted on social media that EliGE’s benching was a mutual decision. They said, “End of a chapter now, beginning a new one coming soon.”
Performance Challenges Lead to Change
The Esports World Cup team’s recent performance in Riyadh led to the conclusion. A 2-1 loss against Aurora Gaming saw them exit early from a Tier 1 event in 16th place. Jcobbb now comes in after ten months of his spell with Betclic Apogee, where he played in online and offline Tier 2 events. Interestingly, his old team reached the top-eight at Fragadelphia 19 in July.
What Will Happen Next for FaZe Clan in CS2?
After the Esports World Cup, FaZe Clan will begin their closed qualifiers for the BLAST Open London starting August 27. This event will be Jcobbb’s debut on the Tier 1 stage. Later, FaZe Clan will be among the invitees for FISSURE Playground 2 in Serbia, which is a race for Valve Regional Standings (VRS) points.
Although Jcobbb did not compete against the world’s best teams too often, he showed his potential by beating The MongolZ and Astralis at PGL Bucharest and completing top ten.