BLEED have announced the signing of Cai “CYPHER” Watson from Team SoloMid.
CYPHER joined TSM last summer following a breakout performance at the BLAST Paris Major, where his strong opening kill percentage and A Ramp pressure on Into the Breach’s home map, Vertigo, were key to their play-offs campaign. They were eliminated by eventual champions Vitality in the quarter-finals.
A big money move to TSM followed but was disappointing for CYPHER on both a team and individual level. The team failed to qualify for any LAN events and typically exited lower-tier online competitions in the early stages. CYPHER, meanwhile, failed to recapture the form that he had managed with the UK-based organisation, with an average HLTV rating of 1.04 across 93 maps with the North American organisation (albeit with a strong 1.19 impact rating).
CYPHER is not the only former Into the Breach player who BLEED attempted to sign. Coach Aleksandar “kassad” Trifunović confirmed that a spot was set to go to Max “maxster” Jansson, who stood in for the British organisation at the end of last season. The deal with Ninjas in Pyjamas fell through because PGL, the organisers of the Major, could not confirm that maxster would be able to play for BLEED after he had been registered as a substitute by the Swedish organisation.
This completes BLEED’s lineup, consisting primarily of former tier 1 players with a “point to prove” – not unlike the direction Into the Breach took when they lost CYPHER. The Pan-European squad features former members of NiP, BIG Clan, Evil Geniuses and Falcons alongside the Brit, with kassad bringing his years of experience to the side as coach. TSM now face an uncertain future with CYPHER‘s departure, though they have been linked with signing former Endpoint coach Allan “Rejin” Petersen to replace Remy “XTQZZZ” Quoniam, who left to join Vitality last winter.
BLEED are:
Hampus “hampus” Poser
Tsvetelin “CeRq” Dimitrov
Josef “faveN” Baumann
Laurențiu “lauNX” Țârlea
Cai “CYPHER” Watson
Aleksandar “kassad” Trifunović (coach)
