K1CK Release CS:GO Team

The Portuguese esports organization announced it is releasing its Counter-Strike: Global Offensive roster. The team has completed only two events before parting ways with the organization.

As revealed on Thursday, July 21, K1CK have released the entire CS:GO roster. The surprising news come just at the start of the summer break, ending the Bulgarian project, which lasted for barely four months.

K1CK formed an all-Bulgarian lineup in March 2022, when the Portughese esports organization returned to the CS:GO competitive scene after a three-year hiatus. Albeit its return to competitive CS:GO wasn’t met with the success K1CK was hoping for.

Upon returning to the CS:GO scene, K1CK acquired a new lineup, headlined by Viktor “v1c7oR” Dyankov and Teodor “SPELLAN” Nikolov, who teamed up with a young core of Victorio “SAIKY” Goranov, Slaven “AwaykeN” Lyubenov, and Kostadin “rafftu” Turbinov.

But even though the roster had a lot of promise, K1CK weren’t able to live up to the expectations, leading to the inevitable disbandment of the squad.

K1CK started its journey with a Bulgarian squad strong by winning the local CEE Champions 2022: Bulgaria qualifying event. Although they proved much less successful in May, when they crashed out of the Ace X Prague Open 2022: Open Qualifier, the team had shown strong performances heading into the CEE Champions.

Unfortunately, K1CK couldn’t find much success in their first tournament, struggling to leave a mark at CEE Champions. The Bulgarian squad started the tournament strong, winning Group C with a perfect 2-0 record and a +18 map difference, but they fell out of the playoffs in the first round, where they lost against Coastal Mayhem.

Things didn’t improve from there onwards. At the end of May, K1CK attended two ROG Masters East EMEA 2022: Last Chance Qualifier events and finished both in fifth-eight place. In June, they also struggled at Doritos Balkan League Season 1, where they crashed out of the group stage.

K1CK’s only notable accomplishment of the year came at the end of June, when they placed top-four at ESEA Cash Cup: Europe – Summer 2022 #1, qualifying for the ESEA Season 41: Main Division – Europe. But again, the Bulgarians did not deliver and ended the tournament in seventh-eighth.

Most recently, K1CK were seen competing in ESL Challenger at DreamHack Melbourne European Open Qualifier, where they lost their opening series against the eventual champions Sprout and ended the event in 17th-32nd place.

In the four months K1CK spent together, the team recorded only four tournament appearances and not a single title. Their best performance came at ESEA Cash Cup: Europe – Summer 2022 #1, where K1CK reached the semi-finals.

At the end of it all, K1CK were ranked no.176 spot in the global rankings, which is far below where K1CK sat in 2018 with an all-Portuguese roster, which peaked at no. 53. But while K1CK decided to part ways with its roster, the story is nowhere done for its former members.

Throughout the four months, raffu and v1c7oR stood out as the best-performing players on the team, averaging 1.28 and 1.17 ratings, respectively. Likewise, AwaykeN did not disappoint with his individual performances, averaging a 1.12 rating in his first professional team.

On the other side, SAIKY and SPELLAN did not live up to the expectations and were the worst-performing players on K1CK, averaging 0.92 and 0.95 performance ratings since March. Nevertheless, there is a possibility that the Bulgarian squad will stick together, granted there are no official announcements about that.

K1CK, meanwhile, has yet to comment whether the organization will stick in the CS:GO scene. But we can expect to get more information on that in the coming days.