Fnatic’s veteran Swedish player Jesper “JW” Wecksell took the backup seat. According to their statements, JW does not intend to break away from esports as a whole.
In fact, the Swedish organization fnatic is making improvement and transformation plans for some time now. The team, which has been in our memory with its past top performance, is far from the peak. For this reason, the organization wants to assume an international identity. In this context, it intends to choose players from different countries for their roster.
They put their plans in this direction into practice by removing JW, one of the veterans of the team, from the current roster. In fact, at the beginning of this month, the in-game leader of the team, Maikil “Golden” Selim, also got benched. Fnatic hasn’t made a statement about the future of other players or the candidates they deem fit to replace Golden and JW. However, as a result of the changes, the current team roster is as follows:
- Freddy “KRIMZ” Johansson
- Ludvig ”Brollan” Brolin
- Jack ”Jackinho” Ström Mattsson
- Andreas “Samuelsson” Samuelsson (coach)
- Maikil ”Golden” Selim (Sub)
- Jesper “JW” Wecksell (Sub)
Actually fnatic has been underperforming since the beginning of the year. So much so that the team could not hold on after the last four high-level tournament attempts. As a result, except for a brief drop in the transitional phase in 2016, they are currently at their lowest level. The organization, is currently in the 47th place, according to HLTV rankings.
Regarding the situation, team director and head coach Andreas “Samuelsson” Samuelsson made some statements:
After 6 weeks of deep evaluations and hard work, we have decided to bench Jesper. We have spent tons of hours deciding which route we are going to take to bring Fnatic back to where we belong, and the final decision is to change to an international lineup. Jesper is one of the most experienced players and has done an amazing job in Fnatic.
JW and KRIMZ each signed three-year contracts in early 2019. Therefore, JW’s current contract with fnatic is expected to expire in early 2022. JW also made a brief statement about his future and stated that he needed time to think about it. He will evaluate what he can do differently and decide where it will stand in esports in the future (CS:GO, VALORANT etc.).
The 26-year-old player played the roles of entry fragger and AWPer throughout his career. Except for a short-term GODSENT adventure, he has been the longest serving player for fnatic for a total of 7 years (from 2013 to the present). In addition, the player contributed greatly to the team with his success in some major tournaments. He is one of the names that won the DreamHack Winter 2013, ESL One Katowice 2015 and ESL One Cologne 2015 championships as the first 6 major tournaments of CS:GO. He also managed to take on more than twenty titles during his service.
