Fnatic officially aquires Golden from Cloud9

Fnatic has confirmed the roster transfer of Cloud9‘s Maikil “Golden” Kunda Selim. The 25-year-old Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CSGO) player has signed exclusively with the team. He was previously on loan to Fnatic from Cloud9.

After much deliberation, countless hours of internal meetings, four semifinal placements out of four, three grand finals, a trophy in Malmö, top four on all of your favourite ranking websites…

We came to one conclusion.

We've signed @goldenmajk from @Cloud9 permanently. 🖤🧡 pic.twitter.com/Wn2ah941Va

— FNATIC (@FNATIC) January 17, 2020

Golden shuffled around

After failing to qualify for StarLadder Major’s Americas Minor and a series of steep losses, Cloud9 revamped their roster in 2019. The organization replaced four of their starting lineup being Golden, René “cajunb” Borg, Danial “vice” Kim, and William “RUSH” Wierzba. As a result, vice and cajunb were no longer obligated to Cloud9. Then Golden was loaned to Ninjas in Pyjamas for the Berlin Major, and cajunb was benched. Golden temporarily replaced Nicolas “Plopski” Gonzalez Zamora on NiP. 

Fnatic rebuilds

In the light of the post-StarLadder Major shuffle, Fnatic was among the first teams to begin rebuilding their CSGO roster. With Simon “twist” Eliasson and Richard “Xizt” Landström stepping away from the active roster and Andreas “Samuelsson” Samuelsson having replaced Jimmy “Jumpy” Berndtsson as coach, the team entered a new phase in their development. Furthermore, indications pointed to Fnatic possibly picking up Golden or Robin “flusha” Rönnquist.

It was later reported that Fnatic’s attempts to sign Tim “nawwk” Jonasson were unsuccessful. Therefore, the organization pursued both Golden and flusha. September 2019 brought confirmation of flusha joining Fnatic’s roster. However, Golden remained contracted by Cloud9 on a loan agreement.

Success with Fnatic

Golden showed strong performances during his loan period. After a grueling 19-month victory drought, the team won DreamHack Masters Malmö in October 2019. Also, Fnatic ended in second place at both StarSeries i-League Season 8 and ESL Pro League Season 10. At the end of 2019, the ESL CSGO World Ranking placed Fnatic third overall.

Golden is joining Fnatic for a second stint this time around. Initially, he played for the team between August 2017 and June 2018. After being promoted from the academy team, Golden acted as an in-game-leader pushing the roster to victory. As IGL, he led them to wins at WESG 2017 Finals and IEM Katowice 2018.

The team will debut at IEM Katowice 2020, starting Feb. 25 with the updated roster:

• Jesper “JW” Wecksell
• Freddy “KRIMZ” Johansson
• Ludvig “Brollan” Brolin
• Maikil “Golden” Selim
• Robin “flusha” Rönnquist
• Andreas “Samuelsson” Samuelsson (coach)