The Brazilian team will use one of their academy players for the next CS2 tournament.
FURIA, the biggest Brazilian organization in CS2 esports, promoted two huge roster changes on April 16, 2024. FURIA benched the in-game leader Andrei "arT" Piovezan and announced that CS2 head coach Nicholas "guerri" Nogueira is transitioning to head of esports within the organization.
Guerri will be the interim head coach in the next tournaments while Akkari, FURIA's founder Jaime Padua, and veteran player Gabriel "FalleN" Toledo assemble a new coaching staff. Even though FURIA haven't decided who will permanently replace arT in the active CS2 lineup, academy player Kayke "kye" Bertolucci has been promoted for the upcoming $200,000 tournament Global Esports Tour Rio, which will run from April 18 to 20.
Why is FURIA making roster changes in CS2?
These roster changes come a mere week after FURIA's co-owner André Akkari said on X that "FURIA's moment in CS2 requires changes". This was Akkari's answer to fans asking FURIA to re-think its CS2 project following another disappointing result, this time at IEM Chengdu. The team finished 9th to 12th in the tournament following losses to MOUZ and HEROIC in the group stage.
The pressure has been high on FURIA since they failed to reach the playoffs of PGL Copenhagen Major in March and saw other Brazilian teams like Imperial and paiN Gaming perform better in the first CS2 Major. ArT and guerri have been the main targets of complaints as they were working together since February 2018 and never led FURIA to win a tier-one LAN tournament in Counter-Strike.
FalleN becomes the captain once again as arT leaves
FURIA signed the two-time Major champion in July 2023 to take over the in-game leadership from arT. FURIA, however, struggled to adapt to FalleN's style, and reinstated arT as the in-game leader toward the end of the year. With arT out of the picture, FalleN has taken over the captaincy once again.
Even though FURIA boasts a full Brazilian lineup nowadays, the organization will build an international academy squad featuring players and coaches from Europe. FURIA will maintain their Brazilian academy and hopes that the exchange between Brazilian and European players will help pave the way so they can build "a more global" way of play CS2.
After the roster changes, FURIA's lineup is:
- Gabriel "FalleN" Toledo
- Kaike "KSCERATO" Cerato
- Yuri "yuurih" Santos
- Marcelo "chelo" Cespedes
- Kayke "kye" Bertolucci (stand-in for Global Esports Rio 2024)
- Nicholas "guerri" Nogueira (interim head coach)
That's all for now. Stay tuned to esports.gg for the latest CS2 news and updates.