FunPlus Phoenix confirm they’re returning to CSGO with GODSENT roster

FPX Esports have confirmed their plan to re-enter the CS:GO landscape and that they’re close to acquiring the former GODSENT roster, pending on the players’ approval.

FunPlus Phoenix have had a rather unceremonious start to their journey in CS:GO. Known for winning the League of Legends World Championship in 2019, they looked to enter the popular FPS title through Flashpoint in 2020.

However, it wasn’t smooth sailing. They picked up and let go of rosters: first Heroic, then Bad News Bears. Now though, following various reports, the organization has confirmed that they’re indeed close to compiling a third roster.

“We at FPX Esports have been in deep talks with GODSENT in the past several months regarding the acquirement of their CSGO roster,” tweeted Petar ‘Peca’ Markovic, General Manager of the org’s CS:GO and Valorant operations. “The mutual agreement has finally been made, and right now we are waiting for the players to review and eventually sign their contracts.”

Once the players are done reviewing the contracts and sign them, this is what their lineup would look like, in addition to potentially bringing current GODSENT coach Jonatan ‘Devilwalk’ Lundberg into the fold:

• Kevin ‘kRYSTAL’ Amend
• Martin ‘STYKO’ Styk
• Jesse ‘zehN’ Linjala
• Pavle ‘maden’ Bošković
• Asger ‘farlig’ Jensen

In late-September, FunPlus announced Markovic as the General Manager for both Valorant and CSGO divisions. Now it looks like peca is making an all-in purchase for the EU roster that is ranked 19th in the world at the time of publishing.

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That said, however, peca previously confirmed that, regardless of the team acquisition, that FPX wouldn’t participate in Flashpoint Season 2. Although one of the founding teams, FunPlus will instead “take [their] time and focus on 2021.”

“We don’t want to make any rushed decisions, as our main goal is to build a promising, long-lasting roster,” he said.

The org initially expected to play with Heroic’s roster back in March, which would have included Patrick ‘es3tag’ Hansen among others. Unfortunately, that deal fell through, which prompted FPX to target Swole Patrol’s roster, though that didn’t pan out as well.

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Eventually, they temporarily fielded the Bad News Bears for the second leg of Flashpoint 1, after only playing one match prior and forfeiting the rest of the first phase.

While the FPX front office successfully put together a Worlds championship roster in 2019 for League of Legends, it’s going to once again attempt to bring a similar metric of success for CSGO.