Cover-Credits:
- Astralis to sell es3tag to Cloud9, financial details of the agreement might not be made public.
- Anders Horsholt, CEO of Astralis Group says that “It is one of the biggest transfers on record.”
- DreamHack Open Fall 2020 will be es3tag's last tournament with Astralis.
The reports that came out earlier today were indeed true as Astralis has officially announced the departure of their three-month-old rifler Patrick “es3tag” Hansen who is all set to join Cloud9 after DreamHack Open Fall 2020. Astralis is referring to this transfer as ‘historic’ with Anders Horsholt who is the CEO of Astralis Group saying that “it is one of the biggest transfers on record.”
Astralis To Sell Es3tag To Cloud9
An agreement seems to have been struck between Astralis and Cloud9 as the former is all set to sell es3tag soon after DreamHack Open Fall 2020 comes to an end. No additional information pertaining to the transfer has been provided from either side at the moment but this is definitely not something that anyone had seen coming.
Since joining Astralis in July earlier this year es3tag had the opportunity to play with the team at two tournaments in which he played a total of 36 maps and achieved an average overall rating of 1.16 with total K-D difference of +71.
Though Astralis was not able to achieve anything significant at ESL One Cologne 2020, the return of Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander along with es3tag’s dominance especially on Train helped the team ensure a dominating victory at ESL Pro League Season 12.
Despite Astralis having six players at their disposal at the time, it was es3tag who was mostly picked in the playing five over Lucas “Bubzkji” Andersen as he seemed to sync better with the rest of the team. So, it comes off as a bit of surprise that they would sell him off to Cloud9 just a few days after attaining the number one spot on the HLTV rankings.
The only reason why Astralis felt comfortable going ahead with this transfer could be attributed to the fact that Andreas “Xyp9x” Hojsleth just two weeks back announced his return to competitive Counter-Strike.
RELATED: Xyp9x Return Announced, Will Join Astralis For BLAST Premier Fall 2020
Maybe Astralis felt a bit overwhelmed when it came to managing a seven-player roster as every other team in the circuit were restricting their lineup to a maximum of six players. The same feeling was expressed by Kasper Hvidt, Director of Sports at Astralis as he said that “Having worked and gained a lot of experience with a 6-man set-up, it is obvious that this is something Danny, our coach, is comfortable with, and we are in no rush to increase the roster short term.”
But despite having said that the ultimate goal for Astralis’ Counter-Strike roster remains to be a ten-player roster similar to how they work in League of Legends. All said and done the financial details of this signing will probably not be made public as mutually agreed upon by both Astralis and Cloud9, making es3tag the only player on the current C9 roster whose contact details will not be known.
The complete Cloud9 roster is as follows,
- Alex "ALEX" McMeekin
- William "mezii" Merriman
- Ozgur "woxic" Eker
- Ricky "floppy" Kemery
- Patrick "es3tag" Hansen
- Aleksandar "kassad" Trifunovic [Coach]
RELATED: Astralis Rifler es3tag Gets Scammed, Loses All His CS:GO Skins
