FaZe secure the services of NiKo

Earlier this week, Ruben "⁠RUBINO⁠" Villarroel decided to step down from North due to a lack of motivation, starting a domino effect that lead to FaZe losing Philip "⁠aizy⁠" Aistrup to the Danish organization.

FaZe used their reserve player Joakim "⁠jkaem⁠" Myrbostad in the meantime, but were looking for a permanent replacement and were allegedly close to adding Adil "⁠ScreaM⁠" Benrlitom to their ranks. However, it looks like Belgian player will be staying in the French scene after all, as he is set to join Vincent "⁠Happy⁠" Schopenhauer and Cédric "⁠RpK⁠" Guipouy in Envy.

To fill the last spot in their team, FaZe will be adding one of the hottest prospects in CS:GO, the star player of MOUZ—Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač.

The 19-year-old Bosnian was ranked 11th in HLTV.org's Top 20 players of 2016 list due to his great individual performances throughout the year, but he didn't achieve much with his team— MOUZ' 3-4th place finish at ELEAGUE Season 1 was by far their best placing of 2016.

NiKo will be playing out one last tournament with MOUZ, DreamHack Masters Las Vegas, before officially joining FaZe. This is what he had to say about the move:

"mousesports has been around for as long as I’ve been in the scene and have always been looked at highly. I've had a great relationship with the organization, with my teammates, and especially with Cengiz (mousesports CEO). FaZe Clan is massive but relatively new to eSports. With such an incredible fan base and the way they have come together as an organization over the year or so, the people I've met and the plans I've seen; this is a dream coming through.

FaZe Clan is a bit of a mystery to us hardcore eSports guys, and to finally look behind the curtain to see what this is all about has been absolutely refreshing. I'm sure you'll all see more of what I've seen over the course of the year. It'll be such as pure pleasure to go for the number one spot together with the team and see the organization grow. They're cool people, they got their heads in the right place, they know their position and they know what they need to do to move forward. Most importantly; all they care about is their people and their fans - that's what I love the most about all this. The passion for gaming and for eSports!"

The FaZe ownership added their statement on the move as well, pointing out that aizy's departure was only approved after they developed a conversation with NiKo:

"FaZe Clan are elated to have NiKo on board. When approached by North about Aizy, before approving his transfer we first needed to survey who our prospective replacements for him could be; and while others were considered, we quickly defaulted to NiKo as a talent we have long coveted. In our eyes, with our lineup around him, he has the potential to become the best player in the world in 2017. Once a healthy conversation had developed between us & mousesports around NiKo, we then moved forward with North’s interest in Aizy. For FaZe Clan, these two moves were treated together as one uniform transaction. However, with Aizy scheduled to appear in North’s lineup immediately, before NiKo appears in ours, we went ahead with the announcements of his move separately."

MOUZ CEO Cengiz Tüylü added that NiKo revealed his interest in joining FaZe after the Major:

"After the major, NiKo approached us with the wish to join FaZe. We agreed that after all the effort he put in at mousesports it was time to search for a solution that would benefit everyone involved. Together with FaZe we were able to work out a mutually beneficial transfer. We see this as a big opportunity to rework our roster and build a much more homogenous mousesports team that our fans can get behind. We had a great time with Niko and I speak on the behalf of everyone at mousesports when i wish him the very best for his career and personal life."

FaZe is now:

Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen
Fabien "⁠kioShiMa⁠" Fiey
Aleksi "⁠allu⁠" Jalli
Håvard "⁠rain⁠" Nygaard
Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač

Robert "⁠RobbaN⁠" Dahlström (Coach)

Professeur writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter.