Following a poor first half of Season 11 of the Pro League, Tempo Storm has announced that the former Mkers player of Manuel "Sloppy" Malfer will join the team once his US visa is approved, with the ex-Team Reciprocity player of Mark "MarkTheShark" Arismendez standing in for him for the rest of Season 11 of the Pro League.
Sloppy has spent most of his R6 career playing in the Italian national scene where he has played in five seasons across two years and three teams with increasingly positive results. Starting in the Winter of 2017 on one of the three IGP Clan teams, he finished in eighth place before joining the Outplayed organisation and qualifying for the ESL Italia Summer 2018 LAN in Milan. There, they fell by a single round in the semi-finals and then the Winter 2018 LAN in Rome where they lost in the grand-final against EnD Gaming.
Following this, his potential was noticed by EnD, Italy's three times back-to-back champions and descendants of a Year 1 Pro League team, and it was on this team that he played in his first real international tournament in Season 9 of the Challenger League.
While EnD Gaming did finish down in seventh-place that season with a 4-2-8 record, Sloppy earnt the second-highest rating on his team below just Panix and was the second-highest-rated player in the league that had not played in the Pro League previously or since, behind the Trust Gaming player of Avaiche. After joining EnD, now known as Mkers, he won two more national tournaments -- the PG Nationals Summer and Winter seasons -- and played in both the Six Invitational 2020 closed qualifier, where they were first rounded, and the Challenger League Season 11 open qualifiers, with Mkers finishing 12th.
Across all these tournaments, his performance has been steadily improving after he was moved to the primary fragging position on Mkers and helped them push towards the Challenger League in Season 11. Now, however, after leaving the team just before the Challenger League Closed Qualifiers, he takes the huge step up into North America's Pro League on Tempo Storm.
Standing in for the team while Sloppy acquires a correct visa to allow him to play comes MarkTheShark. Mark began his career on Xbox when he qualified for the 2017 Six Invitational, finishing in the semi-finals. After moving over to the PC, it took about a year for him to reach the same heights as he joined mousesports in Season 7, finishing in joint-fifth, before replacing Shlongii on Cloud9 (now known as Team Reciprocity), where he would stay for the following 16 months.
Two months after joining C9, the team became the first North American team in 19 months to win an international tournament, at DreamHack Montreal 2018, before it finished in the semi-finals at both the US Nationals that year and the 2019 Six Invitational, where it was the last remaining North American team in the tournament. After falling early in two Minors in 2019, including in the group stage at DreamHack Montreal, Reciprocity finally qualified for its first-ever Pro League Finals in Season 10 only to fall to the eventual champions in the semi-finals. As a result, Mark was kicked from the team in favour of Franklyn "VertcL" Andres Cordero. He now rejoins the Pro League, albeit temporarily, on Tempo Storm.
Since taking Rogue's spot in the Pro League for Season 11 and qualifying for the US Nationals Finals in the space of two days, the roster previously known as 2Faced was quickly picked up by Tempo Storm just before their US Nationals appearance in Vegas. Here, they lost in an incredibly close 7-8, 7-8 scoreline to the Soniqs to exit in the quarter-finals before making their Pro League debut in January which has gone as well as their USN appearance as they sit with one win against Evil Geniuses and a draw against Luminosity Gaming across seven games, leaving them down in seventh place and with half the points of sixth.
While this is clearly not as good as they would've wished, the lack of relegations this season gives them time to make any roster changes they wish and to risk visa issues with an international transfer as the Soniqs previously encountered.
With this change, this now means that the Mkers roster which has spent most of its life playing in sub-Challenger League tournaments has now provided four Pro League recruits in recent months -- their old coaches of Bagel and Jahk who exited to TSM and Na'Vi, SirBoss who exited to G2 Esports and now Sloppy to Tempo Storm.
Furthermore, this pickup now makes Sloppy the first Italian Pro League player since Season 2 and the second Italian Pro League member in the world, alongside the coach of the currently first-placed South Korean team of SCARZ, Riccardo "Hybrid" Massimino Font. Finally, this marks the fourth player to make such a move from Europe to North America, following the Soniqs' SlebbeN and Gomfi, and eUnited's Alphama, however, this is the first time a non-Pro League player has been picked up from across regions.
Tempo's next game will be against Luminosity Gaming on March 23rd when the Pro League resumes when we'll presumably see Sloppy first in action with the following lineup:
Giuliano "Krazy" Solon
Alex "Butterzz" O'Campo
Tim "Creators" Humpherys
Mitch "Dream" Malson
Manuel "Sloppy" Malfer
Mark "MarkTheShark" Arismendez
Trevor "KenZ" D Kenzie (Coach)
David “DnA” Thomas (Analyst)
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