GUILD Esports reveals new VALORANT Line-up

Guild Esports has signed some international players for their VALORANT line-up. They have announced that they gave contracts to Nikita “trexx” Cherednichenko, Jose Luis “koldamenta” Aranguren Herrero and Russel “Russ” Mendes. The 28-year-old Spaniard koldamenta was briefly with G2 Esports, but now moves to Guild.

Some time ago he played for Acend and then was signed by G2 during the mid-season restructuring, but had to leave after the team failed to reach the championship. The second player is Russ, a 23-year-old Brit who spent half a year at TENSTAR. The last player in the bunch is Trexx. In the past he played for OG and Team Singularity, among others. The 18-year-old Russian most probably will take the role of the main duelist.

Guild used to be completely Swedish

The three newcomers will join Leo “Leo “Jannesson and Saif “Sayf” Jibraeel as the only remaining members from the original Swedish Guild. The team will be coached by ex-CS:GO player André “BARBARR” Möller. The 31-year-old Swede played CS:GO for ESC Gaming, Orgless.hu and Team Singularity, among others. He also coached several teams, including Wygers, Ancient and ex-Epsilon Esports.

Before the start of VCT 2021 Guild put together their original Swedish lineup. Guild was a serious team in their region all year, reaching Stage Two Finals, Stage Three Playoffs and Masters One. Sadly they didn’t have the big breakthrough that would have led to international LAN participation. At the EMEA Last Chance Qualifier Grand Final the ended the year with a loss to Team Liquid.

After a year full of unfulfilled hopes and bitter setbacks, the three Swedes William “draken” Sundin, Yacine “Yacine” Laghmari and Malkolm “bonkar” Rench were eventually benched and then released shortly after. Leo and Sayf, however, were allowed to stay and had their contracts extended, which is why they are now part of the line-up again.

The trend is clearly toward international lineups

Guild is following the trend of many top teams in the EMEA region, such as Liquid, Acend and G2, to compete with an international line-up. Many organizations now believe that it makes more sense to pick the best players from around the world, rather than just going by nationality. Whereas a big advantage with national teams is of course the native language. But if everyone speaks English well, that shouldn’t be a problem either.

The new line-up will try to prevail against the other teams at the open qualifiers of the EMEA Challengers One starting on Monday, January 10th. You can also find everything related to VALORANT on our TikTok, Twitter and Youtube channel, where we summarize the news of the day in short, handy clips for you to keep up to date with us!