FURIA head coach Sidnei “sidde” Macedo revealed in a livestream post their FISSURE Playground 2 title that he’d choose Danil “molodoy” Golubenko over the three-time best player in the world, Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev. Yes, that’s how much the FURIA skipper likes his Kazakh wonderkid.
“Between s1mple and molodoy, I’d already prefer molodoy before, anyway,” sidde said on Leonardo “zmb” Toledo’s livestream on September 25. “S1mple was expensive as well.”
Although this left many CS2 fans in shock, by the time FURIA were looking for an AWPer, s1mple was merely sitting on Natus Vincere’s bench for months. He had not proven his worth during the BLAST.tv Austin Major for FaZe Clan yet.
When FURIA signed molodoy from AMKAL in April, Brazilian fans questioned why the organization went for a tier-three AWPer right during the team’s slump. But molodoy quickly proved doubters wrong and became the team’s best player right away, despite his raw English skills.
After FURIA won FISSURE Playground 2 on September 21, molodoy’s stock is higher than ever. The 20-year-old also won the Serbian tournament’s MVP award and is on the way to winning HLTV’s Rookie of the Year over Maksim “kyousuke” Lukin.
Sidde also explained how FURIA approached the market for a new AWPer and discarded South American players Lucas “nqz” Soares and Santino “try” Rigal, as the organization wanted to go international.
SunPayus was one of the options but we didn’t even talk with him. S1mple was also an option but he wasn’t playing. I watched molodoy, gr1ks, forsyy from ECLOT, we also checked fineshine and Alkaren.
We basically made a list of AWPers who were playing a lot on HLTV and FACEIT. But, molodoy and gr1ks first, just because we had looked at him first.
By the looks of it, molodoy is making pennies compared to s1mple. Credit: Michal Konkol | © BLAST
Even though we don’t know how much FURIA paid AMKAL for molodoy and how much is his salary, it’s obviously considerably less than s1mple. Not only is s1mple widely considered the greatest CS:GO player of all time, but he also has a large following and is capable of single-handedly drawing new sponsors for any team.
This week, on September 22, Ukrainian publication Players.com reported that s1mple is earning $130,000/month in BC.Game. That makes s1mple the highest-paid CS2 player in the world, at least according to the Ukrainian outlet.
Players.com also reported that Vitality’s superstar Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut has a salary of $100,000 per month. These numbers haven’t been confirmed by either s1mple nor ZywOo.
S1mple has been playing for BC.Game since July, and he has already proved that he’s far too good for tier-two CS2.
However, we can’t say who is better between s1mple or molodoy, as they never played against one another. Considering s1mple’s strong personality, he’ll have something to say about it when he plays FURIA.
Feature image credit: Michal Konkol | © BLAST
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