Cloud9’s revamp efforts in Counter-Strike 2 for the next season have returned them to one former player. The American organization has recruited former rifler Timofey “interz” Yakushin, according to reports.
Interz is believed to be the face and leader of the new-look C9 roster ahead of the BLAST Premier Fall Groups. Players like Kaisar “ICY” Faiznurov and Nikita “HeavyGod” Martynenko are also expected to join the squad. However, the roster wasn’t empty, as Kirill “Boombl4” Mikhaylov and Sergey “Ax1Le” Rykhtoro were the only two players remaining from C9’s roster last season.
In July 2023, C9 and a lot of eSports fans thought that they had put together the next superteam in Counter-Strike as they brought in NAVI’s Denis “electronic” Sharipov and Ilya “Perfecto” Zalutskiy onto the roster.
However, within a nine-month period, the roster was a big disappointment as C9 failed to meet the expectations of the CS2 fans, although they recorded top-four finishes at BLAST’s Fall Final and the Thunderpick World Championship.
They made a quarterfinal appearance at the PGL Copenhagen Major but couldn’t make the finals at IEM Chengdu, which was more or less the end of the squad. Subsequently, some players on the roster moved elsewhere as Electronic was acquired by Virtus.pro in April, and the duo of Perfecto and Hobbit remained inactive after getting benched.
C9 will rather bring back Interz, who was a player for the organization in 2023. The 23-year-old was a support player after the Gambit core switched to C9 and maintained its form. The Russian squad was consistent and often made playoff events before capping it off with a title at IEM Dallas.
Interestingly, Interz, in his initial days at C9, got benched in late 2022 after C9’s season took a downward turn, which made fans believe that he was scapegoated until he returned as a stand-in in May.
Meanwhile, as of the time of this report, Cloud9 hasn’t officially announced its squad for the new season.
