Four of the most hype transfers that ultimately flopped

There have been plenty of blockbuster moves across CS history, but which earned the highest billing only to flop spectacularly?

Two of the rifle GOATs on one team? Surely they won every tournament they played?

The Americas unite (2018)

This pair of moves was fascinating on paper. The Brazilian legends initially brought Jake "⁠Stewie2K⁠" Yip in when they were SK, and less than six months down the line added Tarik "⁠tarik⁠" Celik just after the team became MIBR.

Combining two of NA's best players with the Brazilian core that had won two Majors and put Brazil on the map was a narrative slam dunk. The Americas region was united under one team, two American stars fresh from winning NA's only Major trophy in history and competing for the top spot in the world ranking, married with one of the game's era-defining cores.

The trio of Fernando "⁠fer⁠" Alvarenga, Gabriel "⁠FalleN⁠" Toledo and Marcelo "⁠coldzera⁠" David had slipped from their position as the dominant force in CS by the time Stewie2K was added. In 2017 they won a plethora of titles, their last coming in December at ESL Pro League Season 6, but results waned in early 2018, culminating in a dire performance at WESG World Finals where they lost to a BIG ranked outside the top 20 and a mix team representing Russia to exit in groups.

Tell me this photo doesn't seem like a fever dream? Is that YNk standing next to the team?

As a result of their decline, the Brazilians made changes and ditched Epitacio "⁠TACO⁠" de Melo. With Stewie2K among their number, the team had managed a couple of wins at lesser LAN events where they had been the only top squad in attendance, but at Big Events had managed a single top-four, and that was it.

The addition of tarik in place of Ricardo "⁠boltz⁠" Prass brought with it a modest improvement in results, they bagged a couple of second-place finishes with one coming at the reasonably stacked ECS Season 6 Finals, but their only LAN win came at ZOTAC Cup Masters 2018, where again MIBR were the only top team in the running. Instead of setting the world alight, the team was a damp squib.

Language issues plagued the squad, something that was a blindingly obvious potential problem when the lineup was brought together, there was virtually zero improvement from the all-Brazilian roster that came before, and overall the team stayed stuck in the mud as one on the fringes of the top-five, but seemingly unlikely to actually crack the top-five and stay there.

tarik and Stewie2K's MIBR make the list because it essentially felt like all of the players stood still for eight months, even though the team was by no means terrible. The greatest Brazilian players of all time diluted their status as the leading lights of Brazil for little reason, whilst two of NA's greats exited the best NA lineup, which was No. 2 in the world at the time, and also saw no benefit. Arguably, all this lineup did was hamper the success and potentially the development of both of their home regions.

Four rifling greats under one banner (2019)

Who are some of the best and most successful riflers in CS:GO history? Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač of course. If you go further back, players like Olof "⁠olofmeister⁠" Kajbjer and coldzera will of course come to mind. If you want to talk about longevity, Håvard "⁠rain⁠" Nygaard surely deserves a mention. What if I told you all four of these legends once played on the same FaZe roster?

The peaks were so very high, but came so very rarely

Over the course of much of 2019 FaZe had struggled and stumbled, unable to find a solution to their IGL problems after the players had mutinied at the end of 2018 to have Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen ejected from the roster. So of course FaZe picked up an IGL to right the ship? Wrong. They instead decided to load up on even more firepower and brought coldzera into the fold to create one of the most stacked rosters, on paper, of all time. NiKo took up the IGL reins, olofmeister was moved to the AWPing role, and a fresh-faced Helvijs "⁠broky⁠" Saukants was brought onboard as a rifler. Thus, Frankenstein was born.

Unsurprisingly, what ensued was largely underwhelming, considering the level of talent on the roster. The squad struggled to find their feet in the first few months, flopping ESL One New York and posting middling results online in ECS, with coldzera and NiKo struggling to both find enough space within the team. The community did get a brief glimpse of what could have been with this roster, however, as they made a dominant run to the trophy at BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen, smashing virtually all opposition to pieces along the way.

Beyond that there was little else to get excited about over the rest of 2019 for FaZe, but coming into 2020 there was still some optimism that they could find the form that saw them dominate in Copenhagen consistently. broky was handed the AWP as olofmeister returned to his usual lurking roles, and with plenty of officials under their belt and an off-season to figure things out, surely FaZe were about to really get going.

olofmeister's temporary departure hampered FaZe

Not so much. olofmeister was barely a shadow of his former self and struggled badly across the first few events of the season, with FaZe failing to go deep at either IEM Katowice or ESL Pro League. He quickly stepped down from the roster citing issues with burnout and motivation. Aurimas "⁠Bymas⁠" Pipiras came in and FaZe managed back-to-back third-place finishes, but the Lithuanian struggled overall and was ditched after FaZe's embarrassing cs_summit 6 performance.

Markus "⁠Kjaerbye⁠" Kjærbye was the next to attempt to fill olofmeister's shoes, and after a couple of poor finishes FaZe showed another glimpse of their potential peak level, as the squad stormed to the title at IEM New York.

Results fell off a cliff immediately after, and by this point the marriage of NiKo and coldzera was basically over. It was already widely known that G2 were closing in on a deal for NiKo by the time of FaZe's triumph in New York, and when the Bosnian did make the move in late October, that was essentially the end for that iteration of FaZe. The organization rebuilt with karrigan at the helm early in 2021.

No prizes for guessing why this transfer makes the list. Four of CS:GO's greatest riflers were crammed into a single team, and for a couple of the briefest and most glorious moments, we saw the immense potential that was there just waiting to be unlocked consistently. Instead, olofmeister was shunted into the AWP role, coldzera never really lived up to expectations and was particularly poor in 2020, and NiKo took a hit to his individual level as a result of taking on the IGL role. The partnership between NiKo and coldzera serves as proof that a team stacked with firepower can easily become less than the sum of its parts.

After NiKo departed for G2, FaZe turned to karrigan to rebuild the squad

Cloud9's Russian superteam (2023)

The hype for this one was off the scale. Two Major winners and best-in-role candidates, Denis "⁠electroNic⁠" Sharipov and Ilya "⁠Perfecto⁠" Zalutskiy, were brought into a squad that was struggling to recapture the form that saw them compete for the title of best team in the world as Gambit during the online era. With Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov and Sergey "⁠Ax1Le⁠" Rykhtorov already among Cloud9's number, both ranked among the top five in HLTV's top 20 for 2022, this seemed on paper like a roster that could win every single trophy on offer.

The hype died real quick. After and underwhelming but not disastrous IEM Cologne showing, the team were easily cast out of Gamers8, completely flopped at EPL S18 to exit the tournament without even getting close to the playoffs, then bounced out of IEM Sydney, CS2's first event, with a single win to their name. This was not good enough for the personnel Cloud9 sported, and it didn't even look like they were moving in the right direction and getting any better.

The lack of a proper IGL was blindingly obvious, and electroNic was suffering in individual terms whilst providing passable calling at best. Then the roster took a monumental hit as sh1ro stepped down seemingly out of nowhere, suggesting that not all was well behind the scenes. Rather than bringing in another sniper, Cloud9 opted to solve the leadership issue by bringing Kirill "⁠Boombl4⁠" Mikhailov into the fold, but that simply shifted the problem to the AWP role instead.

Perfecto and electroNic were supposed to turn Cloud9 into a Russian superteam

Ultimately Cloud9 were probably slightly better without a proper AWPer than without a proper IGL. Results swung modestly in the right direction, a couple top-fours and a playoff appearance at PGL Major Copenhagen followed, but their inability to go toe-to-toe with the best teams in the world, largely due to the lack of a potent sniper, resulted in what seemed like a natural conclusion: the roster was blown up following the departure of electroNic, and the team are now in the process of rebuilding from the ground up.

This set of transfers makes the list for obvious reasons. On paper, this team seemed like a shoe-in for a multitude of trophies, a Major victory, and to take the throne as the dominant team in the world. Instead it wavered and stumbled, we didn't get to see the potential realized in even a single game, and we watched the roster hamstrung first by the lack of a proper leader, and then the lack of a proper AWPer. It feels like this superteam never got the chance to make a real go of it.

Liquid go international (2024)

Admittedly Liquid had already gone down the international route with the signings of Aleks "⁠Rainwaker⁠" Petrov and Robert "⁠Patsi⁠" Isyanov mid-way through last year, but those were riskier pickups and it was easy to brush that off as a false start once rumors surfaced of the powerhouse they were creating for 2024.

One of the greatest and most-decorated players from the region was returning home in the form of Russel "⁠Twistzz⁠" Van Dulken, and the incoming Casper "⁠cadiaN⁠" Møller was a highly-touted IGL whose relentlessly proactive and creative mid-rounding style of CS had significantly influenced the tier-one meta. Top that off with a multi-Major winning Brazilian coach in Wilton "⁠zews⁠" Prado and Felipe "⁠skullz⁠" Medeiros, one of the hottest prospects in South America, and it really felt like Liquid were cooking with gas.

Sights were set on tournament wins, perhaps even Major trophies, and the expectations of the community were sky high.

cadiaN, Twistzz and zews were the key pieces of an ambitious Liquid rebuild

Unfortunately the squad suffered a rocky start in the team's traditional home region of North America, as they were completely unable to overcome the far less prestigious name of M80, dropped a series to Nouns, and labored to wins over virtual no-namers more than once. But no worries, right? It was the start of a lineup of disparate parts from different schools of CS, skullz was still quite raw, and with a decent number of officials under their belt, they would rock up to the Americas RMR on LAN and sweep the competition with ease.

Let the car crash commence; Liquid failed to qualify for the Major thanks to losses to FURIA and Complexity. It was certainly not the kindest schedule, other teams qualified with far weaker runs, but Liquid didn't even run either Complexity or FURIA particularly close. In their next outing they lost to SAW to eliminate them from BLAST Spring Finals contention, and things were already looking bleak for the star-studded roster.

Whilst Liquid's level began to crawl in the right direction over the course of the next few tournaments, rewarding them with playoff appearances at IEM Chengdu and ESL Pro League, flaws in their play remained apparent. skullz was struggling to translate his previous success into tier-one play, decision-making his obvious weakness, Mareks "⁠YEKINDAR⁠" Gaļinskis continued to be a shadow of his former self, and cadiaN seemingly couldn't instil his favored style of play in the team.

Liquid seemed to never buy in to cadiaN's style of play

There were clear rumblings of discontent off the server as well, with differences in vision for the team becoming apparent not only via the rumor mill, but also when viewing Liquid's footage from behind the scenes. The fact that Liquid ejected the entire leadership structure of the team in this off-season, dumping cadiaN and zews overboard, only serves as proof of these observations.

Liquid's international superteam makes the list for two reasons. One, no player besides Twistzz seemed capable of living up to the hype. Two, it's such a painful roster to consider because on paper it should have been fire, but the rumors coming from behind the scenes are that the players could never get on the same page and buy into cadiaN's approach. Liquid moved even further away from their traditional identity as an NA team by ditching Josh "⁠oSee⁠" Ohm and Damian "⁠daps⁠" Steele to make this roster happen, and it bore absolutely zero fruit because they couldn't get everyone singing from the same hymn sheet.