OG Esports enters CS:GO for the first time in organization history

OG Esports enters CS:GO for the first time in organization history

It’s been a long time coming for OG Esports. Being one of, if not the most, dominant Dota 2 team over the past few years, OG finally enters another esport. The organization has been teasing its arrival in Counter Strike: Global Offensive for some time now and now the announcement is official. Signing several high-profile players as well as some up-and-comers, OG looks poised to contend in CS:GO. Whether or not they can achieve the same success as the organization’s Dota 2 roster is the biggest question facing this team. 

OG ventures out to the CS:GO scene

For the past two months, OG has been negotiating with several players for their Counter Strike roster. While some negotiations went south, like the one with now CompLexity player Valentin “poizon” Vasilev, they got a majority of the talent they wanted. 

Here’s the official OG Esports CS:GO roster: 

• Nathan “NBK-” Schmitt

• Aleksi “Aleksib” Virolainen

• Valdemar “valde” Bjørn

• Issa “ISSAA” Murad

• Mateusz “mantuu” Wilczewski

It’s currently unknown if OG has signed a coach to go along with this roster. Though, they didn’t announce a coach as of yet. 

Obviously, there’s a lot of star power on this roster. Led by the likes of NBK, Aleksib, and valde, OG should be competitive in a majority of their matches based on those talents alone. OG shelled out a lot of cash for those three players so they expect solid results out of the gate. 

The OG CS:GO roster

NBK- spent the last year or so playing for French-based organization Vitality. The team had a good bit of success with NBK- being one of the top players on the roster. NBK- should continue his IGL role with the newly formed OG roster. 

As for Aleksib and valde, both players are used to being in the spotlight. On his former team ENCE, Aleksib saw tons of success, including besting Astralis at BLAST Pro Series: Madrid 2019. It’ll be interesting to see if Aleksib can join together with NBK- and make this roster as successful. With valde, many are looking for him to return to form, which was at one time a top-20 talent in the world. 

In terms of the rest of the roster, ISSA and mantuu are pretty big question marks. ISSA was benched by his former team HellRaisers back in September and mantuu hasn’t seen much top tier CS:GO play in some time. However, with such a talented roster alongside them, ISSA and mantuu should benefit greatly. 

OG Esports is obviously excited about this new chapter in their organization. They view it as a stepping stone to bigger and better things in the world of esports. Here’s what the team said about CS:GO as an esport: 

“CS:GO represents everything we cherish about esports: it is spectacular and amazing to watch, the level of competition is unbelievable and increases every season.”

You can keep up to date with all of OG’s CS:GO announcements on their team website or newly formed Twitter, @OGesportsCSGO.

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