NiKo vows to improve team

mousesports made headlines at the weekend as they benched longtime member Chris "⁠chrisJ⁠" de Jong and brought Tomáš "⁠oskar⁠" Šťastný back to the starting lineup in the aftermath of a Swiss round exit at the ELEAGUE Major, with just one victory from four matches.

In a Twitlonger post, Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač revealed that the team will try new things in the future, with Timo "⁠Spiidi⁠" Richter taking over as ingame leader, under supervision of coach Sergey "⁠lmbt⁠" Bezhanov and of NiKo himself.

The Bosnian asked fans to keep the faith in the team and admitted that removing chrisJ, who had been part of mousesports' squad since October 2013, was not an easy decision.

"We obviously had our reasons, but we cannot share them with you guys," he wrote. "What I can say is that I will do everything I can to make this team better.

"We are going to try some new things, which I hope will work out. We will do whatever is needed and possible to improve our results.

"We have changed an AWPer for another AWPer. All I ask from you is patience and not so much hate towards us, we are not going through an easy time, either, as you might think.

"chrisJ is the teammate on this team that I have played with the longest and is one of the best persons I have met out there. I respect him even more now, given how he handled this situation. I wish him the best of luck in his future."

mousesports will make their first appearance with the new lineup on February 4, in the European closed qualifier for the IEM XI World Championship. The team's first offline event will be DreamHack Masters Las Vegas, from February 15-19.