Smooya Joins Team Into The Breach

Former Fnatic AWPer, Owen “smooya” Butterfield, has been announced as the newest member of a British Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team, Into The Breach. The announcement surfaced on Thursday, March 17.

Smooya has been announced as the newest member of Into the Breach, a British CS:GO team, where he’ll remain for at least one month. As revealed by the organization, smooya has joined the team on trial and will serve as the main AWPer for all of Into the Breach’s official matches in March.

With that, smooya found a new home just two weeks after he left Fnatic, who benched him on February 21, following the team’s early exit from IEM Katowice 2022. While an exciting move, it’s hardly surprising.

Smooya has already played for Into the Breach at the end of February and at the start of March as a stand-in, helping the team through a few Pinnacle Winter Series bouts. Now he has been promoted to the position of a trial player for the next month.

“Smooya is joining ITB as trial for the next month, bringing his extensive knowledge, skill and insight to our young and promising U.K. roster,” said team manager Marvin “Punico” Matthes.

“We hope this is the start of something bigger and momentous for U.K. CS:GO. Let’s see where this road leads.”

The addition of smooya follows the benching of Kirk “⁠Tadpole⁠” Stephens and Yaroslav “⁠isk⁠” Issakov, who got removed from the team earlier this month. By adding smooya, Into the Breach found a replacement for isk, but it remains to be seen who will take over for Tadpole.

The current roster consists of Cai “CYPHER” Watson, William “dobbo” Dobson, Adam “Adam9130” Ahmad and smooya on trial. The all-Brish lineup is still missing one more player, but according to the announcement, the permanent roster will be revealed shortly.

Smooya joins the British team as a star player, who is mostly known for not being able to find a permanent home. Since he started his CS:GO esports career in 2016, he has not remained with one team for longer than ten months.

His longest stint came with BIG in 2018-2019, which was also the most successful period of his career. With BIG, smooya made top-eight at the FACEIT Major: London 2018 and claimed bronze from cs_summit 3, SuperNova Malta 2018, and ELEAGUE CS:GO Invitational 2019 and silver from ESL One: Cologne 2018.

Since leaving BIG in December 2019, smooya has struggled to find a team where he would continue his career. He spent short stints with Chaos Esports Club, C0ntact Gaming, and Movistar Riders before he joined Fnatic in October 2021.

Unfortunately, his tenure with Fnatic was short-lived as smooya was cut from the team in February following a streak of disappointing showings.

Shortly after leaving Fnatic, smooya put together a mix to try and qualify for the PGL Major Antwerp but fell flat in the European RMR open qualifiers. He has been since focused on streaming on Twitch.

Admittedly, smooya joined a team that is way smaller than the organizations he has played before, as none of his teammates have any experience competing at the highest level.

Nevertheless, by helping the team such as Into the Breach, smooya has a chance to put his name back on the map and get spotted by another top-tier organization that is looking for a new AWPer.

With the PGL Major Antwerp just around the corner, it’s unlikely for any notable team to make roster changes. But we can expect smooya to receive offers after the Major.