Last night, Alex unexpectedly announced his intention to retire from competition with his teammates at Vitality, according to sources from journalist neL of the reputable news site 1pv.fr.
Alex’s decision to leave the team is said to be due to personal reasons, as he does not want to travel too much, especially with a very busy schedule ahead for Vitality, who will participate in 6 LAN tournaments within just 4 months.
The announcement comes at a difficult time for the French team: Vitality’s results in the last two LAN tournaments (3rd place in Group B at the BLAST Premier Spring Series and 9th-12th at IEM Katowice 2020) have been extremely disappointing, and according to the latest HLTV rankings, they have fallen to 9th place, their lowest since May 2019. With Alex’s departure, it is likely that Shox will return to the IGL role and lead Vitality going forward.
Alex joined Vitality in December 2018 to replace Happy as IGL just one month after the team was formed. Since then, Alex has led the French team to championships such as ECS Season 7, EPICENTER, cs_summit 4, and two appearances in the grand finals at ESL One Cologne 2019 and DreamHack Masters Malmo.
While Vitality’s successes are heavily marked by the best player of 2019, ZywOo, it cannot be denied that Alex’s contributions were significant, as he was the one who built the team into a united collective and established Vitality as a top team in the world.
According to sources, 24-year-old player hAdji from LDLC is likely to be the one to replace Alex. The young 19-year-old German talent Keoz from Syman Gaming is also mentioned, but hAdji will be the main target for this French organization.
Vitality’s lineup in the near future is likely to be:
Dan “apEX” Madesclaire
Cédric “RpK” Guipouy
Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut
Richard “shox” Papillon
Ali “hAdji” Haïnouss
Rémy “XTQZZZ” Quoniam (coach)