Earlier this week, a report by 1pv.fr surfaced suggesting the departure of Alex “ALEX” McMeekin from Team Vitality. The organisation have confirmed 24-year-old in-game leader’s departure. However, the reason is rather personal. The former captain intends to avoid rigorous travel. Team Vitality is yet to announce his replacement, however, the aforementioned report also cited Ali “hAdji” Haïnouss as the foremost choice.
In a TwitLonger statement, Alex thanked and wished luck to his former teammates, coach and team management. While he revealed that his side travelled 36 weeks in 2019 and wished to further reduce it to 22 weeks for 2020 which seemed a distant possibility due to ‘professionalization’ of ESL Pro League & BLAST Premier. He further revealed that his future remains uncertain. The entire statement can be found here.
“I am moving away from playing at this time. Last year we travelled 36 weeks of the year and by July I was struggling to keep up with the intense travelling schedule, coming into this year we wanted to cut that down to 22 weeks (an extra 2.5 months at home). However, the accelerated professionalization of the CS:GO scene, through ESL pro tour & Blast Premier arrivals, changed the ecosystem and we could no longer get down to anywhere near the amount of weeks discussed earlier.”
“That being said, the only logical course of action for me after the year that had just passed was to withdraw myself from the team before becoming too tired to put the necessary work in. I’m not sure what the future will hold for me.”
Alex joined Team Vitality in December 2018 when he replaced then outgoing IGL Vincent “Happy” Schopenhauer. Under his leadership, the lineup triumphed at Charleroi Esports 2019, cs_summit 4, ECS S7 Finals and EPICENTER 2019. He led the squad to 2nd position on Hltv’s global rankings at their peak.
Post Alex’s departure, Team Vitality’s Counter-Strike lineup is down to four:
- Dan “apEX” Madesclaire
- Cédric “RpK” Guipouy
- Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut
- Richard “shox” Papillon
- Rémy “XTQZZZ” Quoniam (coach)
