British League of Legends top-laner Barney ‘Alphari’ Morris has left Astralis and joined Team Liquid.
Alphari will now be leaving behind the LEC in Europe for the LCS in North America.
In doing so, he joins other players who have made the move across the pond, including Perkz from G2 to Cloud9, and last year Broxah from Fnatic to Team Liquid (who has now just moved to CLG).
Team Liquid announced Alphari’s arrival in this video and the following tweet:
Alphari added on Twitter that he’s enjoyed his time playing in Europe and that it wasn’t an easy decision for him, but that now’s his time to ‘achieve results’.
Team Liquid have also signed Danish jungler Santorin from Flyquest.
Santorin and Alphari join Jensen, Spawn, Tactical and CoreJJ as Liquid LoL players.
Alphari originally built up experience in the UK League of Legends scene with Team Infused back in 2015, before getting picked up by Renegades, which later became Misfits. They secured promotion to the EU LCS (before it was rebranded to the LEC).
From there, Alphari spent more than two years at Misfits then another two years at Origen, which recently rebranded to Astralis.
Alphari’s departure from the side comes after Origen had a disappointing LEC season, finishing bottom of the table after some dire performances in the second half of the season.
Finishing 10th didn’t really convey Astralis’ potential however, and it’s fair to say Alphari is not a bottom-of-the-table type of player. On the contrary, he has been regarded as one of the better top-laners in the LEC, and now finds himself in the LCS.
Earlier this year, Alphari said that he’s always believed he’s one of the best top-laners in Europe.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
