When talking about the most impressive CS:GO teams of 2019, ENCE is undoubtedly a name that cannot be overlooked. They made history at IEM Katowice, the first Major of 2019, by consistently defeating formidable opponents to reach the grand final of the tournament. Although they were unable to defeat the giant Astralis, the story of four young players led by the experienced Allu, who trained without a gaming house and played online from their homes during the qualifiers of lesser-known tournaments, helped ENCE become a phenomenon in the professional CS:GO scene and quickly win the hearts of viewers worldwide.
After IEM Katowice 2019 concluded, ENCE maintained their performance with several achievements such as winning the BLAST Pro Series: Madrid 2019, finishing second at DreamHack Masters Dallas 2019, and second at IEM Chicago 2019,… However, every story must have an ending. By September 2019, rumors of internal strife within ENCE emerged right before the Major, and indeed, IGL Aleksib was kicked while the team was still competing at the StarLadder Major. This decision surprised many and even incited outrage as Aleksib was a player well-loved by the Finnish CS community and had guided ENCE since its inception.
Bringing in suNny – a player who had been sitting on the bench of Mousesports for quite a while, along with Jamppi – the young hope of the Finnish CS scene, ENCE had some positive results towards the end of 2019; however, 2020 turned out to be a disastrous year for the team. They played ineffectively and were consistently eliminated from tournaments early; in their last 10 matches, they did not know the taste of victory. Bad news continued as ENCE lost two key players from the team; first was Aerial due to health reasons and then sergej for personal reasons, as he will be serving in the military next year. Thus, Allu is now the only remaining player from the former Major runner-up roster.
Yesterday, Allu appeared on the HLTV Confirm show to discuss the reality and future of ENCE. Here, when discussing the decision to kick Aleksib years ago, Allu admitted: “At that time, we felt that a change was necessary. But now looking back, perhaps we kicked the wrong person.” Allu also shared that this was a decision made by the whole team and he “is not a dictator making all the decisions.” This statement comes amidst Aleksib and his new teammates at OG achieving certain successes by maintaining a position in the HLTV top 10 with stable performances in recent tournaments.
Regarding sergej leaving the team, Allu revealed that at the beginning of the year, they had a month off for the young talent to regain his motivation to compete, but it seems it was not enough. However, sergej continued to try to compete for the team for more than six months before announcing his temporary leave. Yet, while the show was still ongoing, sergej rebutted this by writing on his personal Twitter: “I won’t trust too much in what Allu says; he is not as simple as he appears. I won’t say more about this matter, but former teammates can testify about who is right and who is wrong.” Sunny later also spoke up: “What Allu said is true, but not everything, and everyone deserves to know what happened.” These tweets will certainly raise questions among fans regarding this player, as since its formation, Allu has often been seen as the captain and face of the team with much international competition experience. Even during the livestream, Allu was seen with these tweets, but to this day he has not commented further.
The ENCE members ended a sad 2020 with a streak of 10 losses and had to stop at the bottom position in three consecutive tournaments. It seems it will be a long time before we see the Finnish flag flying high in the top CS arena again and the Ez4ENCE music playing after each match.