Falcons bid farewell to Snappi

3-1-2025 14:22

The Danish in-game leader is expected to join Ninjas in Pyjamas.

Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer has left Falcons to bring an end to a torrid 12-month stint in the Saudi organization.

"2024 was a tough year in my private life and on a professional level it wasn't better," Snappi said on X.

"Us/me not playing to an acceptable level plus an uncertain and chaotic roster situation. I want to thank my colleagues and Falcons for trying their best, but sometimes it isn't meant to be."

The 34-year-old was benched alongside three teammates after the failure to qualify for the Shanghai Major as Falcons opted for a full rebuild ahead of 2025.

He is likely to be replaced by Damjan "⁠kyxsan⁠" Stoilkovski, as Falcons pursue a deal for the HEROIC core in order to grab their number eight spot on the Valve Global Standings.

Sources: Falcons in talks over HEROIC trio

Snappi signed for Falcons last December after a mightily impressive 2023 in ENCE, clinching the title at IEM Dallas and making the final of IEM Cologne.

But he endured "stylistic" differences with Danny "⁠zonic⁠" Sørensen from the get-go and the team never settled despite a top-four finish at IEM Katowice on debut.

As time went on, the damage from the team's failure to secure primary target Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač left Snappi struggling to make an ageing rifle core click and the team had dropped out of the top 20 when Snappi was benched.

Sources: NIP eye roster overhaul with four new players

The veteran skipper has a reputation for scouting and developing young talent, and is set to take a step back with Ninjas in Pyjamas as he looks to get his career back on track and rebuild his reputation.

Falcons are now:

Emil "⁠Magisk⁠" Reif

Danny "⁠zonic⁠" Sørensen (coach)

Pavle "⁠Maden⁠" Bošković (benched)
Álvaro "⁠SunPayus⁠" García (benched)
Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen (benched)

2025-01-03 14:22

Welcome to NIP

cool

time to destroy nip

2025-01-03 14:23

4 replies

What is there to destroy?

2025-01-03 15:32

2 replies

snappi has the potential to destroy something that's already been destroyed, trust

2025-01-03 15:43

1 reply

But granppi is going to uplift Ninjas to #1 like he already has. Check HLTV rankings NIP top 1!

2025-01-03 15:44

Like he did to ence right? The kick aleksib disaster to securing top 2 in hltv rankings?

2025-01-03 17:15

nip still not on top by 2026. I’ll come back here 31 dec 2025

Snappi you better cook on NIP

either he cooks nip or nip cooks him. No other way.

2025-01-03 14:38

Or they cook together :)

2025-01-03 14:39

time to retire old man

2025-01-03 14:24

Money enough? looks like so xd

nip on top is delayed to december 2025 ig

2025-01-03 14:26

Why does falcons cs jersey have a star in it? Isn't that typically used to mark major wins? As far as I know, their cs roster hasn't won any tournaments. Regards

2025-01-03 14:27

6 replies

Their french roster won ECL in 2022, maybe for that lol. Or maybe for the Showdown

2025-01-03 14:33

It's for esports world cup

2025-01-03 14:35

thats not major is it??

2025-01-03 17:06

3 replies

it's for all their esport teams. im sure you can work out why they place extra importance on it...

2025-01-03 17:07

Nero is a GL Fan. I learn something new everyday.

2025-01-03 18:01

ash puts in real efforts to get that team to every major, with different players every time. gotta put some respect

2025-01-03 18:53

unexpected

2025-01-03 14:37

#FaLconsWereHere

2025-01-03 15:04

falcons first then nip idk which worse for career

2025-01-03 15:41

who

2025-01-03 17:45

Welcome to NiP, Snappi.

2025-01-03 18:02

"get his career back on track" the fuck this even means, back to tier 1 by age 40?

2025-01-03 18:45

10 replies

why not? players like karrigan, rain and niko are showing that CS players can have longevity. people really need to get over this idea that CS players have to get washed at 25 and retire at 30. this used to happen because THERE WAS NOT ENOUGH MONEY IN CS for pros to justify the grind past age 25. they stopped playing well because they stopped taking the game as seriously, that's all.

2025-01-03 20:27

9 replies

The difference is that the guys you mentioned arent trying to rebuild their careers from low tier 2 teams. They are on the top, snappi is not. And Niko is 7 years younger than snappi, thats an eternity in esports. Rain 4 years younger. So your argument makes very little sense.

2025-01-04 01:36

8 replies

my argument is, we don't know the actual effects of aging on a CS player or even an esports athlete in general. all observations that can be made about this so far have been distorted by the lack of long-term earning potential. it's only been about a decade right now that CS is a "real job" and it's only very recently with the switch to CS2 that players can gain some confidence in the future of CS beyond the next ~5 years. CS2 has proven that Valve are not going to do anything reckless like CSS any more. they understand the gameplay needs to be preserved and iterated on very slowly if at all. you put all this together and you get careers that are open-ended, finally. maybe it turns out whatever physical attributes are needed for tier 1 CS become exceedingly rare at age 40 and we see a new "wall" for CS players around 40. or maybe not. my point all along has been, we do not know this. any proxy or heuristic you think you have to make this assumption that 40 is too old for a CS player, is an illusion created by flawed data.

2025-01-04 14:20

7 replies

Wow that's a lot of cope, I'm not reading through all that. The effects of aging on reaction time and neuroplasticity aren't a mystery even if you don't know about them. I don't know where you got the idea that retiring was because of money before but that ain't it chief, it's just facts of aging and facts don't care how you feel.

2025-01-04 18:35

think about this logically. pros are retiring later and later. what is changing? is human neuroplasticity changing? reaction time? the only thing that changed, that creates this increasing retirement age, is that the game is a real "career" now when it wasn't before. this EXPOSES that the typical retirement age of 30 in CS is not a product of physical limitations. and if pros aren't retiring because of physical skill loss then WE LACK DATA ON WHEN SKILL LOSS DUE TO AGING WOULD ACTUALLY HAPPEN. we don't know. you cannot handwave this with some BULLSHIT statistics that were done on completely different populations (not athletes of any kind).

2025-01-04 21:06

5 replies

Bro don't tell me to think logically, your entire premise is based on the idea that we don't know what kind of attributes are needed to be a CS pro. That is so clueless that there's no point in entertaining your ramblings, no matter how many fancy words you look up and misuse. Writing in caps doesn't make it any less cope that cognitive science for some reason wouldnt apply to videogamers. Touch grass.

2025-01-04 22:01

you drastically overestimate what little science has been done on this subject. measuring random people's reaction time does not predict how reaction time is going to develop in healthy men who actively train their reactions. you are peek dunning kruger when it comes to "science". also I didn't misuse any terms.

2025-01-05 00:02

It's spelled "peak", and you trying to use dunning-kruger as an insult is peak irony. You know, when someone is clearly really, really low IQ and make it clearer with every message to anyone reading. And at the same time think they're really smart so they don't have any idea how stupid they look? Yeah, that's what is going on here. And of course you can't imagine misusing grown-up language cause you don't know how it works.

2025-01-05 01:13