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Newly established Valorant teams have been going through a lot of roster shuffles lately. While teams like T1 and 100Thieves dropped the majority of their line-up, others like Ninjas in Pyjamas are opting to just bench some of their players to give the spotlight to their new acquisitions.
After signing up former Counter-Strike professional Saif “Sayf” Jibreel, the esports org NiP has decided to bench both Damien “Hyp” Souville and Enzo “Fearoth” Mestari in the upcoming Valorant tournaments.
Both Hyp and Fearoth were signed in July but even with their deep pool of talents, the Valorant squad was not able to achieve much success in the Ignition Series tournaments.
In the recent BLAST Valorant Invitational, NiP lost both their qualifier matches to G2 Esports and Team Liquid, ending their tournament run in the last position.
Dayf had previously played Valorant professionally for Bonk and during the LVL Clash 2 tournament, the team was considered as the second-best squad in the competition. They even reached the finals against G2 Esports but ultimately lost out to them.
Sayf can be a great addition to the NiP Valorant roster
According to NiP’s Valorant head coach Emil “eMIL” Sandgren:
“Sayf is one of the most versatile players in the scene. He got my attention during our time together in Bonk, and I can say with confidence that he is a future star. In my mind, he is one of the best VALORANT players already and I’m happy to have him onboard.”
Sayf getting the starting position in the squad along with Charles “CREA” Beauvois will mean that two players need to be benched in an already-stacked NiP roster.
Hyp and Fearoth got the short end of the stick this time around and according to Jonas Gunderson, Chief Operating Officer at NiP:
“The competitive scene has progressed rapidly over the past months and we have to conclude that we’ve fallen further behind. Becoming a top tier contender on the global scene remains a priority for NiP and we’ve had to evaluate our position. Sometimes a group of five just doesn’t come together to bring out the best of each other, and even though time played together can be a factor, we decided to continue in a different direction without HyP and Fearoth. Adding Emil as a coach – and Sayf into the lineup – provides us with fresh eyes and new opportunities, combined with raw firepower.”
However, neither Hyp nor Fearoth were happy about NiP’s decision and in both of their statements, they talked about their discontentment “with the process and manner by which NiP made the decision to bench them".
