Virtus.pro stopped competing in CS:GO tournaments as they’ve had a disappointing 2018 season, and pashaBiceps retires from CS:GO leaving the Counter Strike community shocked.
Yesterday was a very turbulent day for the Polish team. Due to disappointing results this season, Virtus.pro decided to withdraw their CS:GO team from future competitions. The Poles will not play any professional tournament together in near future. Moreover, the same line-up will not play together anymore considering that pashaBiceps retired from playing CS:GO professionally. Counter-Strike fans are not happy about these happenings in Virtus.pro. The Polish team has a rich and long history. They started playing all the way back in 2004 when CS:GO wasn’t even part of Valve’s plans. This tells us how much Virtus.pro is important for CS:GO community. There are numerous trophies in Virtus.pro’s trophy cabinet and that just makes their decision even harder to accept.
Extremely good first two months in 2017 for Virtus.pro
NEO and company had decent results in 2017. They started 2017 in WESG 2016 in Changzhou and won 3rd place. Their form was gradually improving, so they won the 2nd place in next Premier in ELEAGUE Major: Atlanta 2017. They lost to Astralis in final, so the Poles cannot regret anything. Virtus.pro reached the peak in DreamHack Masters Las Vegas 2017 and clinched the trophy there. They won $550,000 in first three tournaments in 2017. For sake of comparing the last two years, they needed two months in 2017 to win more money than in whole 2018. After the first two events in 2017, Virtus.pro earned $350,000; at the end of 2018 Poles gained “just” $269,080. That explains their decision to cease competition.
However, all of 2017 wasn’t good. Virtus.pro had weak moments in the previous year. They recorded unexpectedly poor results in some big tournaments. At the end of the day, they failed to qualify for WESG 2017, and that was a punch in Virtus.pro face. They didn’t manage to reach ESEA Season 26: Global Challenge, as well. That was the moment when everything started going downhill for the Polish team.
Really bad start of 2018 for Poles
Whole 2018 was so bad for Virtus.pro, but the beginning of the year was particularly hard for them. They started competing in ELEGUE Major in Boston and won the 15th-16th place. Then, they went to Kiev to play StarLadder & i-League StarSeries Season 4. Virtus.pro finished the tournament as a 12th-14th ranked team. They had an opportunity to use home ground advantage in IEM S12 – World Championship in Katowice. However, they blundered badly. First, they lost to G2 Esports and then were victims of Heroic. They failed to win a single map. It was a terrible disappointment for the domestic team. Virtus.pro decided to sign MICHU from Team Kinguin after this loss, in order to improve their performance.
Truly, the Poles started showing better game, as they won second place in V4 Future Sports Festival in Budapest. Then, they won three four places in different tournaments. Basically, that was it for 2018. They failed in a vast majority of events. The only good result they had till the end of the year was final of CS:GO Asia Championship 2018 when they lost to Natus Vincere 2-1. Virtus.pro tried to shake a roster little bit, so they benched morelz and signed snatchie after IEM XIII in Shangai. However, Virtus.pro continued achieving terrible results. They won the 23rd-24th place in FACEIT Major in London. After that, morelz returned to the squad, but nothing particularly happened. Everything stayed the same.
The melting point was their appearance on Europe Minor Championship – Katowice 2019. First, they got humiliated by Team Vitality. Team Vitality won Mirage 16-5 and Inferno 16-1. It was such shame for Poles. They were mentally down after this loss. Therefore, their loss against x-kom Team wasn’t so surprising.
Roman Dvoryankin was optimistic after London Major
General Manager of Virtus.pro said that they were quite optimistic after London Major. According to his words, people from Virtus.pro believed in the potential of the Polish squad. However, results didn’t meet expectations. The long-term plan of Virtus.pro is to build a strong team based on young players, he said. Roman asked for support of their fans on Virtus.pro website.
“I grew up in esport, I will stay in esport, I will die in esport”
This was what popular pashaBiceps wrote on his Twitter page announcing retirement. Jarosław “pashaBiceps” Jarząbkowski is so long in esports. His career began in 2007. However, he started to actively play Counter-Strike in 2010 for Frag eXecutors. He had a very successful time there. Two Premiers and many Majors and Minors were won by Frag eXecutors in that period. Pasha then had short episode in AGAiN, and then quickly moved to ESC Gaming. Pole was part of ESC Gaming for almost two years. He started playing there by winning two huge tournaments, but then results got worse.
That’s it ! I grew up in esport , I will stay in esport I will die in esport… your papito 💪❤️ pic.twitter.com/mcmg6BPKzB
— paszaBiceps (@paszaBiceps) December 13, 2018
PashaBiceps joined Virtus.pro at the beginning of 2014 and he stayed there till the end of a career. There he won 10 Premiers and earned most of his money. He definitely was one of the reasons for Virtus.pro great accomplishments. According to his tweet post, he will surely find a way to stay in esports, so we perhaps can still watch Jaroslaw in CS: GO events, if not as a player, then as an analyzer or even a coach, who knows.
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