Fnatic’s Warcraft 3 team was disbanded today after three of its key members have left for other teams.
Fnatic did not play their Warcraft 3 Champions League playoff to stay in the competition against Four Kings today. The match was a forfeit loss to 4K.
As it turned out, Fnatic’s Russian players Robert “Rob” Abdrakhmanov, Mikhail “XyLigan” Ryabkov and Finnish star Juha-Matti “Satiini” Bäckström received offers from other teams and decided to leave the organization.
This left Fnatic with Kevin “RotterdaM” van der Kooi and Radoslav “DieSeL” Kolev and the options to either try to rebuild the squad or give up. The management chose the latter and disbanded the team.
While their Counter-Strike 1.6 team has been a consistent winner for the past two years, Fnatic’s Warcraft 3 team had “only” stayed in the WC3L for five seasons. Qualifying for the WC3L playoffs would have required signings much more expensive than what top CS players cost.
Fnatic was not willing to spend the money necessary to improve the team. The WC3L has got the strongest playing field in its history and it would take either the best European players or top level Asian players to so much as sustain Fnatic’s status in Warcraft 3.
Other teams were and gave Rob, XyLigan and Santiini what manager Elroy “Noname” Pinto called “offers they could not refuse this time.” In an interview with GosuGamers, Noname admitted that Fnatic had once kept those players from joining Mortal TeamWork. The players are reportedly going to New Russia.
RotterdaM and DieSeL, the remaining players, “didn’t see this coming so fast so they don’t have teams ready.” Time will tell where they will end up playing.
This was not the first time that Fnatic loses high-skilled players. Once upon a time they had Kim “SaSe” Hammar and Olav “Creolophus” Undheim and had to let go of them the same way. They bounced back before, but will not do so this time.
