Following the sanctions imposed upon Virtus.pro by BLAST – and potentially more in the future – YEKINDAR gave an interview with a Latvian site that suggests his future in the line-up is unclear.
It’s important to note that he mentions he would like to stay with his teammates if possible, as he had grown friendships, but if the war led to his Russian teammates struggling to get VISAs and VP banned from events, then changes would probably occur.
Don’t you wanna just scratch behind his ears? And the dog, too.
This is the stand-out line in the interview, and suggests that if these issues occur, either the whole team or the individual parts would become available.
YEKINDAR himself would be a very exciting pick-up for a whole lot of teams, as a ridiculously aggressive, mercurial superstar – but he would not be alone. Qikert is a very solid, versatile piece who is perennially underrated, and buster is a very calm, experienced player with many of the same qualities.
Should the Russian players become available, FL1T has not done his chances of finding a top team any harm with recent performances, and Jame is a player we all know to be an excellent player.
YEKINDAR denied any rumours that Virtus.pro stopped the players from speaking out against Russia, but potentially hints that ESL may ban them from Pro League.
This, however, is difficult to know if this is YEKINDAR hinting at it or the writer of the piece, and as finding a perfect 1:1 translation from Latvian is very tough, we will assume that that was the writer suggesting they might not be allowed to compete.
He suggested his performance in Katowice was not great from him, but spoke joyfully at the success of his fellow countryman broky, referring to him as a ‘piglet’. We glean that this suggests he did extremely well.
We hope, anyway.
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