ENCE bench valde due to differences in playstyle; target Nertz

Academy player Henri "⁠HENU⁠" Ylilehto will stand in for the team in the short term, including at CCT Central Europe Malta Finals.

ENCE has announced the removal of Danish rifler Valdemar "⁠valde⁠" Bjørn Vangså from the active roster. The international team has been struggling to play to up to the same level they were at before losing Lotan "⁠Spinx⁠" Giladi to Vitality in 2022 and have now decided shake up their starting five.

valde's benching comes the day after Endpoint's Guy "⁠NertZ⁠" Iluz, a previous target of the Finnish organization in the summer of 2022, missed the Blast.tv Paris Major's RMR qualifier with his current team "for personal reasons." HLTV learned that ENCE has shown renewed interest in the Israeli and could potentially make a move for the 23-year-old, although for now it will be academy player HENU who will stand in for the team at the upcoming CCT Central Europe Malta Finals until a permanent solution for the starting five is found.

valde has been sidelined after half a year in ENCE

valde's removal from the starting five comes after a slow start to 2023 for ENCE, who missed the IEM Katowice group stage after being eliminated from the play-in following losses to Cloud9 and Complexity. This result was a continuation of middling results in the second half of 2022, which include 17-20th at ESL Pro League 16, 9-11th at the IEM Rio Major, and 5-6th at Elisa Masters Espoo. The Dane's best finish with ENCE was a second place finish at ESL Challenger Rotterdam.

"We have reached the conclusion to bench valde due to differences in his playstyle compared to the rest of the team," stated ENCE's General Manager, Niklas "Willkey" Ojalainen. "Unfortunately, it hasn’t clicked as well as we had hoped during the past six months, but we want to thank valde for his time with us and his contributions as a hardworking player and a great teammate.

"Issues regarding playstyles are hard to fix, and it’s clear we need a player whose style matches ours better. We give valde the highest recommendations, and we are sure that he will find a new strong team soon!"

ENCE are currently on the road to Malta with their academy youngster, where they are slated to play the CCT Central Europe Malta Finals on February 16-19 for the lion's share of $100,000 and a spot at the CCT Global Finals.

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Team list finalised for first CCT LAN event

ENCE is now:

Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer
Pavle "⁠Maden⁠" Bošković
Paweł "⁠dycha⁠" Dycha
Alvaro "⁠SunPayus⁠" Garcia
Henri "⁠HENU⁠" Ylilehto (stand-in)

Eetu "⁠sAw⁠" Saha (coach)

Valdemar "⁠valde⁠" Bjørn Vangså (benched)