AGO promote leman, DGL from NEST squad to replace oskarish, mhL

The Polish team will shift the in-game leader duties to another player while moving their most prized asset to the bench for at least a month.

AGO have announced that Eryk "⁠leman⁠" Kocęba and Brajan "⁠DGL⁠" Lemecha have been promoted from the organisation's secondary squad, AGO NEST. The pair will replace Oskar "⁠oskarish⁠" Stenborowski and Miłosz "⁠mhL⁠" Knasiak in the starting lineup, with the former having been placed on the transfer list.

leman is no stranger to the squad, having played for AGO's main team between July 2019 and April 2020, helping the team to win the Polish Esport League - WarmUp PGA, LOOT.BET Season 5 and OGA Counter PIT Season 7. DGL, a 22-year-old AWPer, will get his first chance to play at a high level after impressing while playing for AGO NEST in recent online tournaments.

Damian "⁠Furlan⁠" Kislowski will be taking over as in-game leader from oskarish, who had been part of AGO's set-up since March, when he was signed from Illuminar. The change in leadership comes after the team failed to reach the goal that the organisation had set: to finally achieve stability.

"On paper, our line-up looked promising; we strongly believed that we would jump to the next level," team coach Mikołaj "⁠miNirox⁠" Michałków said in a statement. "I had high hopes seeing Oskar's commitment and the amount of work he put into the preparation. Not everything that looked good during the training was translated into official matches. That's why we decided that with Oskar's contract coming to an end, we would look for other optimal solutions. Despite playing in ESL Pro League, our goal has not yet been achieved."

mhL will be spending at least a month on AGO's bench at his request after struggling to juggle his academic commitments with his team's practice routine. The 18-year-old, who was recently featured in our "One for the future" series, has been the team's top performer in 2020, putting up above-average ratings in all tournaments prior to the recent ESL Pro League season, in which the Polish team finished 13th-14th with a 2-5 record in the group stage.

"From the very beginning we informed that as an organization we will not stand in the way of players who continue their education," AGO vice-president Maciej Opielski said. I had many discussions with Miłosz about the possibility of reconciling the school with trainings and matches. During one of them I informed him about the possibility of suspending his active participation in the life of the team for the time of catching up with the school.

"We have to remember that mhL is in the high school graduation class and in the coming year he will take the high school leaving exam - if he feels that at this stage he is not able to reconcile with the game, we as an organization take note of this and support him in this decision."

The new-look AGO squad, which will gather on October 3 for a week-long bootcamp, currently features:

Damian "⁠Furlan⁠" Kislowski
Dominik "⁠GruBy⁠" Swiderski
Maciej "⁠F1KU⁠" Miklas
Eryk "⁠leman⁠" Kocęba
Brajan "⁠DGL⁠" Lemecha

Mikołaj "⁠miNirox⁠" Michałków (coach)

Miłosz "⁠mhL⁠" Knasiak (benched)
Oskar "⁠oskarish⁠" Stenborowski (transfer listed)