Fnatic Bench Smooya in Favour of an Academy Player

Fnatic Bench Smooya in Favour of an Academy Player

Fnatic Bench Smooya in Favour of an Academy Player

Following their 9th – 12th finish at IEM Katowice 2022, Fnatic have decided to make a change in their roster. Thus, Owen "smooya" Butterfield has been benched and replaced by their academy player Iulian "regali" Harjău.

22-years-old British AWPer joined Fnatic last October on a trial basis. With him in the roster, the team managed to show some great results in online, qualifying for IEM XVI Winter and winning DreamHack Open November. Later at offlane events however the roster was not able to reach top places, finishing 7-8th at IEM XVI Winter and 9 – 12th at IEM Katowice. Although smooya was one of the best performing players on the team, they still believed that he was “not the right fit for the roster”.

Now the team will be playing with a 19-years-old Romanian player regali, who for the last six months has been part of their academy team Fnatic Rising. Their next event is ESL Pro League Season 15, which will begin on March 9th – there the team will compete in Group A alongside G2, NIP, Entropiq, MOUZ and LFO.

Fnatic:

  • Freddy "KRIMZ" Johansson
  • Ludvig "Brollan" Brolin
  • Alexander "ALEX" McMeekin
  • William "mezii" Merriman
  • Iulian "regali" Harjău
  • Jamie "keita" Hall (coach)