Fnatic benched Xcalibur to make Place for Abed

Fnatic has not started the new Dota 2 season very well. Several big Dota 2 competitions have already finished and Fnatic was not able to achieve any good results in any of those tournaments. Because of that, Fnatic and the team’s management realized that something needs to be done. In the end, Fnatic decided that they will bench Steve ‘Xcalibur’ Ye in order to make a place for the new player that might bring much better results for the team.

The player that will be replacing Xcalibur in the Fnatic’s roster will be no other than Abed ‘Abed’ Yusop, currently one of the most popular Dota 2 players in the world. There was no talk in the previous weeks that connected Abed with Fnatic and because of that, this announcement has been a bit of surprise for almost all Dota 2 fans.

Terrible Season for Fnatic

So far, Fnatic has played in the qualifiers of five tournaments and they were not able to secure a place in the main tournament in any of those competitions. Despite that, Fnatic managed to find their place at the first Dota 2 Major tournament this year, ESL One Hamburg as they were brought in to replace HappyFeet that had to withdraw from the tournament for undisclosed reasons. Besides that, Fnatic also managed to find their place at another minor Dota 2 tournament, AMD SAPPHIRE Dota 2 Pit Minor but they were was again brought in as a replacement team – this time it was as a replacement for Mineski who withdraw from the tournament earlier.

Unfortunately for them, they did not have a lot of success at either of those two tournaments because they finished in the last place in both competitions. According to some sources, the results in those two tournaments were the reasons why the team decided to make some changes in the team.

Current Roster

However, Abed is not the only new member in the Fnatic Dota 2 team. Together with Xcalibur being benched, the team has released their team coach, Ahmad ‘ADTR’ Syazwan apparently because of the team’s poor performances in the tournaments. His replacement was Adam ‘Adam/343/’ Shah and he took over the coaching position as soon as it was announced that ADTR has left the team. Adam has already been part of Fnatic before as he played in this team some time ago.

Besides that, Adam has also worked as Fnatic’s drafter at the International 2016 which, according to many fans, was their best year in Dota 2 competitions. That year, Fnatic finished in the fourth place at the International and that was their best result at the biggest Dota 2 tournament in the world. Considering that Valve has introduced a new system of competition, the Dota Pro Circuit, Fnatic will also feel some consequences in that aspect as well.

Fnatic has made a change in their roster at the time when signing players is not recommended by Valve. It is not forbidden but there are consequences for signing players outside of the shuffle period. Because of that, when or if Fnatic wins any pro circuit points at any of Dota 2 tournaments, a certain amount of those points will be reduced because of the breaking the rules.

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