Welcome Back to India: Global Esports announce the Russ signing

Valorant

21 Sep

Ganesh Jadhav

A week ago, Global Esports announced their plans to rebuild for the VCT 2024 season on X/Twitter. Since then, they have announced two players starting with Benkai on the 16th and following it up with LightningFast on 17th. Last Night, Global Esports Valorant announced their third member in Russel “Russ” Mendes.

Who is Russ?

Russ will be Global Esports’ third player for the rebuild. Similar to a lot of players, Russ is a CS:GO alumnus. He switched to Valorant in 2020, while continuing his CS journey, and completely transitioned to Valorant in 2021 after signing with Tenstar. He was most notably part of the Guild 2022 roster alongside Sayf, Leo, trexx and Koldamenta.

During the time, Russ and Guild were amongst the top seeds of EMEA and represented the region at VCT Masters Copenhagen 2022 alongside Fnatic and FPX. After Guild Esports, Russ joined Les Petits Bouffons for VCL North Polaris.

Russ IGL’d the team and was the second best rated player on the team throughout the season. Unfortunately, Russ and LPB did not qualify for the VCT EMEA Ascension and their season concluded.

What does Russ bring to Global Esports?

With his time on multiple EMEA teams and International experience, Russ will be a great asset to Global Esports. Additionally, he can play multiple agents and has good IGL'ing experience. With Russ in the roster, there will be a lot of ideas from an EMEA Valorant perspective. Especially with Benkai and LightningFast already part of the roster, the new Valorant shaping is shaping up to be an interesting mix of flexible players. The team just needs two more players to complete the roster.

It is also to be noted that Russ is a British-Indian and holds dual citizenship, implying he does not count as an import (confirmed by Dr. Rushindra Sinha, CEO of Global Esports). This makes him an asset to the team as there aren’t many Pacific players with International experience.

It also leaves room for an import, adding more International experience. The team can now look into a wider range of options, especially with Benkai, LightningFast and Russ all being amazing flex players. Post the announcement, Russ thanked the organization for the opportunity and also confirmed that he’d be leading the team.

The community backlash on Global Esports Russ:

After the announcement, multiple community members expressed their dissatisfaction with the hate the announcement and Russ received, especially since Russ has yet to play for the team.

A lot of the negative public outcry stems from the fact that Global Esports has been teasing repeatedly for all their announcements. They farm X/Twitter impressions for every announcement. Obviously the organization is not wrong for creating a buzz for the announcement, but it sets unreal expectations.

Why the negative reaction?

From an outsider's perspective LightningFast or Russ aren’t “Star” players and it is hard for their names to match the buzz created by Global Esports’ X/Twitter farming. It has always been hard for organizations to justify acquiring role players or unproven talent, but Global Esports’ aggressive farming really has been hurting the Russ announcement.

The sad fact of the matter is, from an outsider's perspective it is hard to know what goes on in a team or what works for a team. For an outsider, the only rubric available are the results and the stats. If a player doesn’t stand up to the community’s rubric, the player is deemed “bad.”

But hating on a player’s announcement without watching the team play is unjustified. Obviously, fans have a right to criticize their favorite teams and hold them accountable. Esports is a public facing business and organizations must cater to the fans. But it is also the fans’ responsibility to be open to an organizations’ experiments and not premptively judge and flame them.

Who'd be the two next Global Esports players?

Global Esports have already teased the fourth player in the Russ announcement video. It is likely for the prev. BOOM Esports' Gary "blaZek1ng" Dustin who was the rumored to have signed with GE. The organization also confirmed the plans to stay with Coaching staff BigTime and Spin today.

With four really flexible players, the last slot to be filled by Global Esports' has to be Star duelist. There hasn't been rumors about the fifth player and it is not certain who it'd be. For now, we'd have to wait until GE announces the squad further. For all updates on the roster follow Global Esports Twitter. You can also for VCT 2024 rostermania on Strafe.