Sprout bench Zyphon, trial Maze as IGL

7/2/2023 - 19:29

Rasmus "⁠Zyphon⁠" Nordfoss' stint on the active lineup has come to an end after just five months of service.

Sprout have announced that Zyphon has been moved to the bench, making way for Mikkel "⁠Maze⁠" Sparvath, who joins the squad on trial after previously being a part of Let us cook.

The incoming Dane will also be taking over in-game leadership duties, relieving Ismail "⁠refrezh⁠" Ali of the role after he took over the reins following his signing back in August.

Zyphon heads to the bench after just five months on the active roster

refrezh was candid about the difficulties surrounding his new-found role as captain, saying to HLTV.org at IEM Katowice that "it was tough" for him and that it was "a lot of responsibility" he had never properly had before. He also touched on issues surrounding a speech stutter in a recently released TwitLonger, explaining that his speech impediment has hindered his ability to call and prevented the Dane from being as proficient in the role as he would have liked.

refrezh on IGLing: "It's been tough for me"

Maze's addition gifts the Dane a chance to test his mettle as a captain at a tier-one level. The former fnatic Rising player has experience in leading from his time at the academy roster, and was also recently unveiled as the captain of Janusz "⁠Snax⁠" Pogorzelski's Let us cook lineup before being snatched up by Sprout.

Zyphon, meanwhile, is moved to the inactive roster after spending just five months with the team, being brought on alongside refrezh in August when the team made an international pivot. The Danish rifler performed admirably in his time with the team and averaged a middle-of-the-pack 1.06 rating.

The move comes as the team start gearing up for the soon-to-begin Major cycle. The Romanian-Danish hybrid raised eyebrows after defying the odds and earning an IEM Rio Major Legends Stage berth, with the side looking to repeat this feat for the upcoming BLAST.tv Paris Major in May.

The new-look Sprout will be making their debut in the IEM Brazil closed qualifier, where the ensemble are set to have an opening-round matchup versus 9INE on Wednesday at 15:30 .

Sprout will have the following roster moving forward:

Victor "⁠Staehr⁠" Staehr
Laurențiu "⁠lauNX⁠" Țârlea
Ismail "⁠refrezh⁠" Ali
Adrian "⁠XELLOW⁠" Guță
Mikkel "⁠Maze⁠" Sparvath

Danny "⁠BERRY⁠" Krüger (coach)

Rasmus "⁠Zyphon⁠" Nordfoss (inactive)

WHY 😭

2023-02-07 19:30

28 replies

astralis

2 replies

Undeserved

2023-02-07 22:39

1 reply

2023-02-08 11:10

too toxic

2023-02-07 19:32

2023-02-07 20:23

kqly fan: opinion rejected

2023-02-07 21:22

he gets tilted too fast

2023-02-07 19:44

Regali instead of xellow an this is a major contender team

2023-02-07 19:53

20 replies

yes

2023-02-07 19:58

3 replies

XELLOW has below 1.00 rating as an awper in 30 maps, bruh

2023-02-07 21:21

expected... he is trash against good oposition , but everyone throught he was better than slaxz lmao. slaxz is not that good , but he is WAY WAY better than this bot lmao. repositions wise is 10-0 vs this bot

2023-02-08 00:17

He just has a passive and reserved playstyle. It's not your typical flashy awper, but plays as a insurance policy. Works on low tier, but not on the higher level. I think he will figure it out tho

2023-02-08 09:42

And -launx +?

2023-02-07 20:00

4 replies

nah. we belive in launx

2023-02-07 20:04

But danish 5 better in communication

2023-02-07 20:09

the manager and berry said they will never get a 5 danish / 5 romanian / 5 german or whatever 5 man nation team . So this would never happen

2023-02-07 20:15

I know their manager he’s in German pro teamspeak all the time and never sticks to his words xD

2023-02-07 20:49

tbh rather keep XELLOW and add Regali in as a rifle/2nd awp Regali can do more with a rifle than XELLOW, and it gives you a powerful awp duo

2023-02-07 20:21

8 replies

i guess. but than we kick refreshz so we can have a romanian TRIO

2023-02-07 20:27

xellow launx awp duo is already good enough

2023-02-07 20:41

6 replies

if it's good enough why aren't Sprout a good team?

2023-02-07 21:59

more things that make a good team than just double awp duo :D

2023-02-07 22:29

clearly there's hasn't been working. Post Rio they've only beaten EG in terms of "good" teams and that's being loose. During and Pre-Rio to a reasonable time back they have 2-0 over NiP 2 Bo3's, 1 Bo1 over Mouz 1 Bo1, 1 map off ENCE 1 Bo1 over Furia 1 Map off FaZe 1 Map off Vita 1 Map off Outsiders also never even played top 10 or 5 teams on LAN in the last year so all of that was online. In fact their only win against someone ranked 20+ on LAN was the NiP who would've been 11th at the time and on a downswing. in the last year, they've barely touched top talent, beating the gatekeeper teams for T1 on occasion and sometimes taking a map off big teams. That's not good, that's pitiful. If I was to seriously make an overhaul of their roster; disband. You can't do anything with this core 5 and the current pool of international players, and there isn't enough talent for them to commit to 1 nationality.

2023-02-08 07:42

why cant we have fun?

2023-02-07 22:54

Which would be the best possible Romanian roster right now ?

2023-02-07 23:53

Launx, xellow, im, regali, blytz

2023-02-08 08:45

Not at all,Regali is playing a whole different game tbh because his team plays around him so he can do stuff ,if Regali is not playing he loses.Xellow cant do this stuff in sprout with 2 starplayers because he is not allowed to,he got no backup.

2023-02-07 21:00

name checks out

2023-02-07 21:06

rip

2023-02-07 19:29

bad igl

lmao

Wtf

huh

lol

wtf

rip let us cook

-xyp9x +zyphon

Uhhh… ok… I guess

and another shit move by sprout! how unexpected! zyphon is a huge prodigy IMO and of course they arent investing in him. hope he finds a better home.

18 replies

hes not mentally right

2023-02-07 19:31

he is the worst mental player ever , he was tilting every posb lan game , i dont even want to know what he was doing online

2023-02-07 19:33

9 replies

well i didnt have this impression when he was in cph flames i think it wouldve been worth to work on it

2023-02-07 19:42

xd? guy was literally chilling and owning entire faceit queue

2023-02-07 19:54

faceit queue bro , stop hltv mentality

2023-02-07 19:57

5 replies

ur hardstuck level 8 that has no clue about cs whatsoever, so dont even bother

nobody gives a SHIT about faceit faceit is PUGGING. playing real 5v5 is total different

2023-02-07 20:18

where is your expertise coming from?

2023-02-08 13:51

23 years worth of Experience

2023-02-08 22:23

You're too old to be arguing like a 12 year old on this site then.

2023-02-10 11:48

yeah my friend got him in a faceit game ofc that motherf*cker was automuted xD

well they need proper igl but idk who should they replace

their current IGL :^)

refresh is a very good rifler , idk about maze's capabilities as an igl (never watched him)

2023-02-07 20:01

yeah i like refrezh as well but if you need a rifler i'd almost always prefer zyphon over him (i'm not sure how the roles in sprout are distributed tho, maybe the move makes sense after all, but considering we're talking about sprout, i doubt it)

2023-02-07 20:14

then again, zyphon is only benched, they might bring him in at any time

2023-02-07 21:56

Maze is the next Big igl to come out of the Danish lab of top tier igls.

2023-02-08 11:48

hope so

2023-02-08 12:57

Kind of a bad decision imo

evan peters benched D:

unexpected

#SavelauNX

12 replies

2023-02-07 19:34

Loool, launx bot, Staehr better

2023-02-07 19:46

nordic flair spotted , launx is their best clutcher and rifler , even berry said it , and berry got both of them in the team , suck on it l0ser

2023-02-07 19:52

Broo being from nordic country dosnt matter.

2023-02-07 21:13

nah launx is better, more consistent , staehr at least for the last 2 months has played like shit

Launx under 1 rating in t1

2023-02-07 20:07

Ofc , he didn't have a lot of lan experience before this year :D , and staehr did , staehr played under danish pro's + talking with ex astralis players like device or others , launx from t5 nexus stuck with matchfixers became this good :D , if you take a look at both , launx progression is far more beautiful and natural ^^

2023-02-07 22:05

and btw launx has the worst position posb almost , 60% anchor , 40% freeroam , and staehr is 90% freeroam and 10% anchor , so let's dont talk about stats when launx has the worst posb positions

2023-02-07 22:06

hltv.org/stats/players/20304/staehr?star.. if this is shit then he is the next goat

i think u are dreaming

2023-02-07 19:56

save staehr and lauie

lets be all friends and agree we need to save both launx and staehr

astralis -xyp +zyphon we need this

Xyp washed after 5 years Zyp washed after 5 months Buzz washed after 5 days

2023-02-07 19:35

Germans used to be smarter

2023-02-07 19:37

ur post washed after 3 min...

2023-02-07 19:38

infact, this post very dirty still. Hasnt showered in weeks like me.

2023-02-07 20:48

2023-02-07 20:22

is this cause zyphon was toxic?

Benching best player in roster, nice

best player kekw

2023-02-07 19:40

bro.. stop , i know its though in ukraine but , you can not say that haha . Launx is individually the best and probably staehr is at the same level

2023-02-07 19:43

Even by rating zyphon was 4th, + he's a toxic one, and such atmosphere hinders everyone's game on your team, so cutting him was the best option. Not sure about maze, but at least sprout are smart about it and are looking for an igl

2023-02-07 19:51

Well, someone bought the kid, otherwise this makes no sense.

ASTRALIS PLEASE

I mean I get the -zyphon he was inconsistent, I understand refresh couldn't be his best igl ing but maze? Sprout is a top 20 team nowadays why not find a good igl, even if it means a buyout that would weight a lot if they wanna break the t1 "barrier" imo

What igl would you take ?

aze is a good igl. he made fnatic rising win academy league and beat some t2-t3 teams also

Zyphonn

astralis licking their damn chops right now

Would he fit?

2023-02-07 20:13

FREE STAEHR PULL THE PLUG ASTRALIS.

Welcome to Astralis :)

poor zyphon hope someone buys him

if they haven't sold zyphon this is fucking stupid maybe bench sprout management

2023-02-07 19:36

to make room for refrezh u got to bench zyphon? it does seem like they have sold him already

you dont bench zyphon zyphon benches you

Lmao

Very funny)

astralis will buy him ez money for sprout

They tell me that forg1 did not resist

2023-02-07 19:39

would be great if astralis picked him up ( even tho xyp will finish his 60 years contract ) i doubt sprout will sell him for cheap for any org

+1 sprout is one of those orgs

2023-02-07 21:15

Sprout lost me as a supporter lol

Zyphon completely washed. His last chances might be some ECSTATIC or MASONIC roles. GGWP

-FASHR +Zyphon you heard it here first

i think its a mid change because zyphon gets tilted very easy but idk if maze is good as igl

i don t think it takes that much to be better than refrezh who is a rifler.If he can be decent and refrezh starts playing like before it might actually be really good.

2023-02-07 19:49

yeah but i didnt watch any of mazes matches so i cant say anything about him thats why i sayd that idk if maze is good as igl

lol wtf

2023-02-07 19:47

well, it s not that bad cuz now maybe they can activate refrezh (who has one of the best riflers in the online era, i was sad to see him fall like this) and a real igl might help them considering they have some real firepower.I hope Astralis tries zyphon, 1.02 rating doesn t look that much of a star player or something but under a good system he might be really good in the future.

I hear he is toxic which could be the reason behind his benching, sure he has lots of talent but if he doesn't fit right then it's stopping the team's development, maybe back to Copenhagen flames for one of 3 igl's?

2023-02-07 19:50

Looks like I need to change my fantasy lol

what 😦

If Astralis doesn't get this guy now, we can safely assume there's some kind of corporate self-sabotage going on there.

Would he fit in the team and be an upgrade? I haven't followed zyphon so I don't know myself.

2023-02-07 20:17

watafak zyphon tosic¿??

not deserved

2023-02-07 19:55

Let us cook: Sprout: You ain’t cooking shit

wtf???? lmaoooooooo what a suicide move

2023-02-07 19:59

sorry but who is maze?

what the fuck

zyphon too good to be benched , but i guess they wanna do something new like giving refrezh some freedom

2023-02-07 20:03

-refrezh -zypoohn +iMgod + good t2 igl, maybe nickelback or jerry if they ever go pasha london school.

2023-02-07 20:05

It doesn t look like jerry will ever leave forze lol

2023-02-07 21:31

anluke

2023-02-07 21:36

How is refrezh already washed +zyphon not beatin the toxic allegations

2023-02-07 20:08

Maze danish? lmaooo

Benching Zyphon instead of refrezh? I mean, in some way it makes sense. Refrezh is much more expierenced, which is pretty valuable in this young team and he can fully commit to being the support this team needs without the burden of an IGL. Skillwise this is obv. not a good decision, but it's not always just about skill.

Astralis Zyphon confirmed ez

Why are you all drooling over this statistically super mediocre player?

hltv.org/stats/players/20090/zyphon?star.. dunno what it is man, maybe its because he made playoffs at a major and is 19 years old hltv.org/stats/players/20090/zyphon?star..

2023-02-07 20:29

Plus good skill ceiling just need work on mentality

2023-02-08 02:49

ez 4 9ine

dumb move

staehr should have gone to astralis instead of suffering this clown fiesta

Zyphons shit are people really surprised?

benched their best player lmao

2023-02-07 20:25

zyphon to astralis inshallah

2023-02-07 20:26

He was definitely better on the CPH Flames roster then his time in Sprout but its hard to say if it was his fault or just a system he couldn't excel in. One thing I always liked about Zyphon with the Flames was that he typically played better at big LAN's and the Majors. Unlucky timing because Astralis would have been all over this before Buzz signing

letsgo zyphon in msl team: aizy niko zyphon msl lucky

Rip his career then

2023-02-07 20:31

good change IMO

2023-02-07 20:35

Astralis the time is now

2023-02-07 20:37

Astralis should pick him up and get him a sport psycholgist. Hes good but he tilts like crazy.

2023-02-07 20:51

what

BAD MOVE , they dont have firepower now . zyphon had good impact . good rifler .

2023-02-07 21:25

Well, I like the fact they're giving Maze a chance, the guy seems like a good caller and a really good fragger at that, but was that change really neccessary? Honestly, I feel like Zyphon was doing ok, I mean, he wasn't phenomenal, but tbh. they just signed XELLOW, and didn't even have much time to practice with this roster, they showed up in Kato, almost beat OG, beat EG, took a map off Spirit, I'm surprised they're making roster changes this early. Probably refrezh didn't feel comfortable as an IGL, so they decided that they need a new one and cut Zyphon as he was probably their weakest player, although I still feel like this kick wasn't deserved. Weird.

2023-02-07 22:10

Unloko situation, i like zyphon too

2023-02-07 23:15

So noone gonna talk about how maze fckd his brother snax??? Wtf

2023-02-07 22:59

Maze was the only one cooking something

2023-02-08 08:02

zyphon solo carried sprout at rio. his ceiling is really high. apparently he is a toxic tilter which i did not know about, but i would still try to buy him if im astralis

2023-02-08 00:14

Same

2023-02-10 11:44

Damn Zyphon has badass irl name

2023-02-08 00:15

imo what a huge mistake

2023-02-08 03:33

Nooo, I hope Zyphon finds a great team soon! All the best to him! 💙

2023-02-08 08:56

That a bold move,considering that he was there best player.

Bro.. how can you say this xd, he was not their best player , their best individual player is clearly launx , and staehr is like the best calculated player in that team . he was the 3rd / 4th best player and he was TOXIC AS FUCK

2023-02-08 13:57

Whyyyyy. Stop cringing with standins

2023-02-08 13:56

Imagine benching zyphon. Legit one of the best talents and aimers in DK

2023-02-10 11:43