CSGO: Smooya and Nex Return to BIG, Bench Denis

The German organization Berlin International Gaming has confirmed an alteration to their CS: GO roster following the retirement of their IGL Faith ‘Gob b’ Dayik earlier today.

BIG will bench Denis ‘denis’ Howell from the active roster and fill the remaining slots with returning players Owen ‘smooya’ Butterfield and Johannes ‘nex’ Maget. However, Maget will not be immediately returning to the line-up due to an injury that BIG expects to be fully healed in the near future.

SMOOOOOOOOYAAAAAAAAAAAAA! 🇬🇧

He's back lads! @smooyacs returns to the @BIGCLANgg lineup with immediate effect!

We can't wait to see you back on the server! 🔥#GOBIG pic.twitter.com/YTkHycFSNC

— BetwayCSGO (@BetwayCSGO) August 2, 2019

Until Maget recovers, Nikola ‘Legija’ Ninić will act as a stand-in. This means that Ninić will play for BIG at the GG.BET New York Invitational that begins tomorrow. In addition to this, BIG’s coach Alexander ‘kakafu’ Szymanczyk will also stand down from his position. BIG have announced that they will provide more information regarding their coaching staff “in the upcoming weeks”

BIG's Big Announcement

Daniel Finkler, BIG’s CEO, had this to say about the changes:

“2019 has been a challenging year so far, but every difficult situation comes with opportunities to make the right decisions. We went through many difficult and challenging periods and we always managed to overcome those times with hard work and dedication. But not everything went as expected this year and we had different expectations at the beginning of 2019. For this reason, we decided to make significant changes within our CS:GO division. The decisions we had to make were difficult and tough on a personal level. We are not a „cold“ organization, we believe in friendship, team spirit and all of us have a good heart – we are a family and share the same values. That is why I want to express my gratitude to all of the people who are affected by those decisions.”

The current BIG roster is now as follows: