M80’s VALORANT team has made a shuffle just one match into the second split of the North American Challengers 2024 season after they replaced one of the veteran players on their list.
This announcement was made on Thursday stating that Nicholas “nitr0” Cannella will step down from the active M80 VALORANT roster. The organization is replacing him with former G2 player Michael “neT” Bernet, who they removed from the roster in April.
It’s a return to the Challengers scene for NeT, reuniting with core of players he and his ex teammates beat at Ascension in 2023. NeT also played with them under The Guard banner at 2023 Challengers before he went on to joining G2. With the Guard, they defeated M80 in Brazil at the Ascension finals as they got promotion to VCT Americas for the next two years.
However, securing the VCT Americas spot didn’t help neT and crew, who struggled to get to the top-tier international league. This was because The Guard organization exited esports, leaving the players to scramble for a new organization to play under if they had to play.
Even playing at the competition was made possible after community backlash forced Riot to permit the players to get an organization to sponsor them as G2 came into the role.
The team started VCT 2024 slow and G2 released neT to bring in former Evil Geniuses reserve player icy as G2 ran in the playoffs of stage one to make Masters Shanghai where they currently remain undefeated in Shanghai, securing a top-three finish at the competition.
Similarly, M80 had a slow start compared to expectations from fans after the team brought in both nitr0 and BcJ in the offseason, having finished top-four in both stage one and the Mid Season Cup as well. In the stage two, they lost 2-0 to Oxygen.
