Astralis have announced that they have benched their Counter-Strike 2 in-game leader (IGL) Casper ‘cadiaN’ Møller after failing to qualify for the Austin Major.
The Danish organisation have replaced one experienced Dane with another by signing seasoned pro Rasmus “HooXi” Nielsen. The announcement means HooXi will make his long-awaited return to pro play having not competed for almost a year. G2 Esports benched HooXi back in July last year and he had remained inactive until now.
And that isn’t the only change for Astralis either as the organisation also announced the departure of Sports Director, Kasper Straube.
In a statement released on X (formerly Twitter), Atralis CEO Jakob Hansen confirmed that these decisions were made due to “lacklustre results, culminating in the missed Major Qualification.”
He then commented on both departures: “Kasper Straube has served as our Sports Director since 2023. He has been dedicated, professional, and loyal to Astralis throughout his time here. I want to thank Kasper for his hard work with the team and the organization, and I wish him the very best for the future.
“Casper “cadiaN” Møller has been benched, and we thank him for his time and efforts at Astralis. Casper has proven himself to be a true professional, however, in the end, neither he nor the team managed to reach the level of play we had all hoped for. We wish Casper all the best going forward.”
cadiaN joined Astralis back in September from Team Liquid but was unable to recreate the highs of his career afer he won the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Rio Major in 2022 and the BLAST Premier: Spring Final in 2023 with Heroic.
Meanwhile, HooXi has also won a series of events during his time with G2, including the BLAST Premier World Final in 2022 and both IEM Cologne and Katowice in 2023.
His former teammate Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov, who recently made a big money move to Team Falcons, described HooXi as the best IGL he worked with at G2. Speaking on the All About Counter-Strike podcast, m0NESY said: “He was the guy who was working the most in our team. I’ve never seen a guy working harder than him. Watching, preparing for enemies, he was sometimes up until 3 a.m. to prepare anti-strategy against the team, and to have some important information for the teammates for tomorrow. He sacrificed his sleep and obviously he played a lot of matches as well. It’s crazy. Rasmus was insane. Maybe he didn’t show good individually sometimes, but for the team he was doing a lot.”
Astralis will be hoping HooXi can guide the team to better performances when they compete at PGL Astana which begins on May 10.
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