Shox Reveals Why He Left the French CS:GO Scene and Joined Team Liquid

The 2022 competitive season gave rise to a lot of new CS:GO lineups and interesting rosters. One of the biggest moves was long-time French veteran Richard "shox" Papillon moving out of the region and transferring to North America to join the Team Liquid roster.

This decision was strongly influenced by Team Vitality as it switched from a completely French lineup to an international CS:GO team following the signing of Danish trio - Peter "dupreeh" Rasmussen, Emil "Magisk" Reif, Danny "zonic" Sørensen.

In a recent interview with Team Liquid, shox, who left the French scene for the first time since starting his career in 2006 with Counter-Strike: Source, spoke about what influenced his decision to join Team Liquid towards the tail end of his career.

Shox talks about why he decided to leave the French scene and move to North America

Over the years there has been a tectonic shift in the strength of the French CS:GO scene which has now depleted to its current state in 2022, where for the first time in years there will not be a single completely French roster at the highest level of the competition (top 15 teams as per HLTV CS:GO world rankings).

With Vitality being the last French stronghold in CS:GO and the organization deciding to go international ahead of the 2022 competitive circuit, shox was forced to put himself on the market as he was not prepared to downgrade and start afresh in the French scene.

"When Vitality told me that I wouldn’t be part of 2022, I put myself out there on the market. Unfortunately, you can’t deny that if I stayed in France, I would have to downgrade, in terms of teams," said shox, as he went on to state the reason behind why he would have been forced to downgrade.

With Vitality going international the only other French team that came to shox's mind was LDLC. But according to him, the gap between the two teams was huge, leading him to believe that "If I was to start again in the french scene, it would be from way down, and it would be a harder climb back to the top. From then on, I left the door open to any possible offer.”

This is why shox decided to move from France and accepted the offer to join Team Liquid, where he is a part of the main roster. With this, shox has followed in the footsteps of other players like Nathan "NBK-" Schmitt who branched out from the French scene into international waters.

So far the revamped Team Liquid CS:GO roster has not been impressive as it failed to qualify for BLAST Premier: Spring Finals 2022 through the BLAST Premier: Spring Groups 2022 and attained a 13^th-16^th finish at the IEM Katowice 2022.

However, the team has qualified for the American RMR (Regional Major Ranking) tournament from where it can potentially qualify for the PGL Major Antwerp 2022 as well. The competitive circuit has just begun and there are still a lot more events left for Liquid to prove the strength of its lineup.

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