Update (June 22nd):
Aside from this change in players, two new staff members will be joining the team to replace Rogue's old coach of Laurent "Crapelle" Patriarche, who has since joined Fnatic. Joining as their Strategic Coach, will be the ex-coach of the British Challenger League team of CR4ZY, Ramiz "rcuth" Cuthbert, while former Team Secret man Wille "r0usty" Turunen will be joining as the Performance Coach.
Rcuth previously coached both the cores of OrgLess and GiFu before joining CR4ZY, where he was crowned the British national champion and helped them to a sixth-placed finish in the Challenger League. Perhaps most notably, though, CR4ZY knocked out the Pro League teams of G2, Chaos, Vitality and OrgLess in the Six Invitational qualifiers. He now finally joins the European champions in the Pro League as their primary coach in what is a huge jump for him.
On the other hand, r0usty's signing as the Performance Coach also seems to be critical, as it is likely a role Rogue is desperately in need of considering their record at LAN events. The best-known team with a psychologist on the roster is likely Team Liquid, as their psychologist had helped them improve their performance bit by bit throughout 2019 to reach their OGA PIT Minor victory.
Original Article (June 6th):
After a number of early exits at the 2020 Six Invitational and the Pro League Season 9 and 10 Finals, the reigning European champions of Rogue have opted to make a number of changes to their playing roster.
Hicks and risze at the 6 French League Finals, then playing under Giants Gaming.
Leaving the playing roster will be their two oldest members, Théophile "Hicks" Dupont and Valentin "risze" Liradelfo, after over two years on the team. While the former is only benched with the option to look for a new team, as per the official Rogue press release, risze has already left the team outright.
In this time, the two were crowned the DreamHack Austin champions, won three separate French national tournaments, and attended seven tier-one LAN events (Minors or Pro League Finals) making it to the quarter-finals at the Paris and Raleigh Majors and the semi-finals in the Season 7 Pro League Finals.
Replacing them will be the former Team Secret player Leon "LeonGids" Giddens, after his previous team disbanded after almost three years together, and Team Empire player Eugene "karzheka" Petrishin.
LeonGids while playing for Team Secret at the Raleigh Major.
In his time with Team Secret, LeonGids had shown himself to be one of the best fraggers in Europe, winning two Minors -- DreamHack Valencia 2018 and the Allied Esports Minor -- and finishing in the top four at both Six Majors, alongside winning the UK ESL Premiership once.
As well as this, LeonGids also played in Seasons 8 and 9 of the Pro League, achieving ratings of 1.16 and 1.07, thus finishing as the 10th and 14th-best performer in Europe in each season. Even when dropping down to the Challenger League, LeonGids' performances did not drop as he finished with a 1.24 rating in Season 10 and 1.01 in Season 11.
The Estonian of karzheka, on the other hand, had been with the Team Empire roster since the April of 2018 and had gone on to achieve extremely strong results with the team during his time with them. Starting with a Russian Major League win with the new organisation, he won two more seasons of the domestic league but lost last week for the first time against Virtus.pro.
Team Empire won the Six Major Raleigh with karzheka at the helm.
Of course, he and Team Empire are better known for their wider European and international exploits. After a lossless Season 8 of the Challenger League, Team Empire shot straight to the top with the Pro League title in Season 9. He then helped his team get to the grand final of the Six Invitational 2019 against G2 Esports, before securing revenge with a win at the Six Major Raleigh (after defeating LeonGids and Team Secret in the semi-finals).
A second-round exit at the Six Invitational 2020 and fourth and third-place finishes in Season 10 and 11 of the Pro League, compounded by the Russian Major League Season 4 loss to Virtus.pro, led to karzekha looking for greener pastures with Rogue instead.
These changes mark the second major reshuffle of the team since they first moved to be an English-language lineup. The team had initially picked up Léo "Alphama" Robine and Aleksi "UUNO" Työppönen just after Season 8, before replacing UUNO with Lukas "korey" Zwingmann six months later and then Alphama with Jan "ripz" Hucke seven months further on to form its most recent roster.
Rogue at the 2020 Six Invitational -- of the four in this image, only AceeZ (far right) is still on the team.
Now with these further changes, Rogue remains a German-majority team and will be hoping to show these changes in action in both the GSA League every Thursday and the European Open Clash charity tournament tonight, before the EU League kicks off in three weeks, with this roster:
Maurice "AceeZ" Erkelenz Lukas "korey" Zwingmann Jan "ripz" Hucke Leon "LeonGids" Giddens Eugene "karzheka" Petrishin
