Golden rejoins Fnatic as a permanent member
Fnatic have officially signed their former In-Game-Leader Maikil "Golden" Selim as the permanent member of their CS:GO roster, after he spent four months as a loaned player from Cloud9. With his signing, Fnatic have completed their roster for 2020 season.
The 25-year-old IGL joined Fnatic on September 16, 2019, on a loan basis alongside his former teammate Robin "flusha" Rönnquist, who both played for Fnatic in 2017-2018.
The arrival of Golden and Flusha was in eyes of many a very questionable move from the Swedish esports organization and there were not a lot of people who believed the move would eventually pay off. That said, all the doubters went silent soon after, as Golden and flusha helped Fnatic win DreamHack Masters Malmö in October, less than three weeks after their arrival, and with that ended Fnatic's 19-month long trophyless period.
After winning their first LAN title since March 2018, Fnatic managed to keep up the tempo and claimed silver at StarSeries & i-League CS:GO Season 8, ECS Season 8 – Europe and ESL Pro League Season 10 – Finals, as well as a third-fourth place at ECS Season 8 – Finals, which catapulted them from 24th to third spot in the HLTV Global rankings by the end of the year. As of January 18, 2020, Fnatic are ranked as the fourth-best CS:GO team in the world, sitting behind Team Liquid, mousesports and Astralis.
Golden started his professional CS:GO career back in 2016, when he joined visomvet, which is a Swedish CS:GO stack formed by Kevin "kevve" Hansen in 2015, which still operates and competes in C-Tier tournaments as of today. In 2016, Golden got spotted by Fnatic's Academy team who decided to sign him and his former teammate Linus "Bååten" Bååt Andersson in August later that year.
Golden played under Fnatic Academy banner until August 2017 and was later promoted to the main roster, where his CS:GO career took off. As an IGL, Golden led Fnatic to several titles, including ESL Pro League Season 6 – Europe, IEM Katowice in February 2018 and WESG Finals in March 2018, however, got benched in June 2018 in favour of Richard "Xizt" Landström, who took over the role of the new IGL. Golden left Fnatic in August 2018 when he joined Cloud9.
Flusha followed suit at the end of September 2018, when he opted to re-join with Golden at Cloud9, where the duo played for the next year and a half.
During Golden's time at C9, he found success hard to come by, and his ongoing medical issues, which prevented him from holding onto a permanent role in the starting lineup did not help his cause either. Throughout his stay, Golden did not win a single event with the North American organization, who decided to bench the Swede in June 2019. Golden remained an inactive member of C9 for the rest of the year. The Swedish IGL also made an appearance at StarLadder Berlin Major 2019 in August, when he played as a stand-in for Ninjas in Pyjamas, who crashed out of the tournament early and finished 15th-16th.
In May 2019, C9 decided to part ways with flusha, who joined Fnatic, while Golden was allowed to follow his Swedish teammate as a loanee later in September. His loan at Fnatic lasted for five months until this Friday when Fnatic decided to sign Golden as a permanent member of their CS:GO team.
With the signing of Golden, Fnatic finalised their all-Swedish roster, which now features four players, who represented Fnatic in their golden era back in 2018 when they won IEM World Championship. The Swedish squad will now start their 2020 season with their first appearance at IEM Katowice, which will take place from February 25 – March 1.
Fnatic roster:
Jesper "JW" Wecksell
Freddy "KRIMZ" Johansson
Ludvig "Brollan" Brolin
Robin "flusha" Rönnquist
Maikil "Golden" Selim
Andreas "Samuelsson" Samuelsson (coach)
