GamerLegion went from a simple tier-two CS:GO team to runners-up of the BLAST Paris Major in May. And instead of offloading its star players to bigger organizations, GamerLegion wants to keep its roster intact and become a true tier-one team.
Despite persistent rumors, specifically about young in-game leader Kamil “siuhy” Szkaradek and star rifler Ivan “iM” Mihai, the latter of whom was in the race for MVP alongside ZywOo, GamerLegion apparently has no plan to sell them.
“Now it’s time for us to take the next step to stay in the tier-one scene,” GamerLegion’s director of esports Julian Miculcy said in an interview with Dexerto on June 5. We want to play the big tournaments and not be in the lower tiers all the time… I feel like there are obviously organizations who will have interest [in buying GamerLegion’s players]. But if we want to stay in tier one, we need to keep the team together, and I feel we have a great chance of doing that.”
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It’s a natural step for up-and-coming players to leave teams like GamerLegion to join a more-consolidated organization like G2, FaZe Clan, or Team Liquid. These organizations can offer more structure, in addition to much higher salaries.
Miculcy, however, seems optimistic about keeping the team together. He said his players are not “money driven” and GamerLegion can offer them a “lot of things” other organizations have forgotten about, although he did not elaborate.
There are no concrete negotiations in place right now. The community believes, for example, that siuhy is one of the players in contention to possibly replace HooXi on G2. So we’ll have to wait and see if GamerLegion is actually capable of holding its stars when the offers start to arrive.