Cloud9 Swap Xeta with Curry

Cloud9 announced big changes to its Valorant division. As revealed, the North American esports organization replaced Son “xeta” Seon-ho with Rahul “curry” Nemani on Sunday, May 15.

Cloud9 freshened up its Valorant esports division with the arrival of curry, who replaced xeta on the starting lineup. The decision follows Cloud9’s less-than-convincing performances this season.

Cloud9 entered the Valorant esports scene in 2020 but have struggled to establish itself as one of NA’s top teams. Over the first year, Cloud9 haven’t achieved much but started posting solid results midway through 2021.

Most notably, Cloud9 finished VCT 2021: North America Stage 2 Challengers Finals and, after a streak of solid results, even made it to the season-culminating VALORANT Champions 2021. Unfortunately, the NA powerhouse failed to achieve much on the big stage.

Despite making it into the playoffs, Cloud9 suffered an early elimination and ended the VALORANT Champions 2021 in fifth-eight place. It was a solid result but far below the organization’s expectations.

However, Cloud9 did not make any roster changes ahead of the 2022 season despite failing to deliver at the Champions. Instead, the organization decided to keep their lineup intact, and it paid off.

Cloud9 kicked off the year with a title from Knights Arena Valorampage, and they did well at VCT 2022: North America Stage 1 Challengers. But not good enough.

In the first NA VCT Stage, Cloud9 dominated the group stage, going 5-0 with a +53 round difference.

But despite their solid performance in the group stage. Cloud9 slipped in the playoffs. After defeating Knights in the quarter-finals, Cloud9 lost against OpTic, bounced back with back-to-back wins against Version1 and XSET, yet proved no match for The Guard, who knocked them out of the playoffs in third place.

Cloud9’s relatively solid performance wasn’t enough to qualify for the Reykjavik Masters, which led to the first roster change of 2022.

Even though Cloud9 was one of few teams that did not make any roster changes during the offseason, that changed this week. The recently announced roster swap marks the first change since August 2021, when Cloud9 acquired in-game leader Anthony “vanity” Malaspina from Version 1.

Unfortunately, for xeta, he will be the first player to leave the organization in nearly one year. Xeta has been a part of Cloud9 since January, when he was brought over to NA alongside coach Yoon “Autumn” Eu-teum following the dissolution of C9’s Korean Valorant roster.

Meanwhile, his replacement, curry, arrived at C9 from T1, which he has been a part of since February 2021.

The Korean esports organization has always been considered as a team on the precipice of tier-one Valorant, but they always fell when it mattered the most. Most notably, T1 failed to qualify for the VCT Stage 2 Challengers, leading to roster changes.

But regardless of T1’s lack of success, curry has been a standout performer for the team. As someone who is known for playing Viper, KAY/O, and Skye, curry will serve as a perfect replacement for xeta, who has primarily been playing Breach and Viper.

However, even though C9 decided to add curry, this does not mean the end of the road for xeta, who has been picked up T1, where he will compete alongside Zander “thwifo” Kim, Joshua “steel” Nissan, and Josh “pwny” VanGorder.

The swap deal also sees head coach Autumn arrive at T1, where he will take over the head coach position. Meanwhile, it remains to be seen who will Cloud9 acquire to fill in the vacant coach spot.

Curry is set to make his debut for Cloud9 on Sunday, May 22, when C face off against OpTic in VCT NA Challengers 2.