Although the Duel scene seems more active than ever with weekly cups and plenty of prizes to be collected on different LANs, leagues and cups, this season's ESL Intel Extreme Masters European Championship is plagued with players dropping out and choosing to not participate anymore.
We are three Playdays in the European Championship and already four players have dropped out in the two weeks prior. First Russian Konstantin "
Cny" Kalganov was banned from Quake Live, then
Belorussian Andrew "Balk" Baltsevich had more pressing personal matters to take care of and chose to drop out.
To replace them, both Dan "zsx" Sanders and Kenneth "plaZma" Aulie were called in. Later that week, both Magnus "fox" Olsson and Emil "
DAXI0" Lanuszny were removed from the league. Their replacement were found after an ESL-hosted Last Chance³ Qualifier, seeing both Robert "
tox1c" Kopczynski and Viaceslavas "
fire_bot" Duk move in.
Yesterday, however, troubled news reached us that another player had contacted the IEM admins, asking if he could be removed from the tournament as well. The Swedish Daniel "
a1r-r41d" Götell had been placed in Group A of the online portion, playing and losing his one and only match against the Polish wonderboy. Thus, now choosing to drop out completely.
The ESL has announced that Group A will just be played on and that no replacements will be looked after. The only question remaining is whether or not this news is the last we hear of players dropping out. Let us hope that the rest of the matches will be played out and give us some interesting results.
ESL Statement:
Unfortunately another participant of the European Quake Live Championship has decided to withdraw from the running competition. After Magnus 'fox' Olsson leaving the tournament, it is another Swede, who decided to leave the competitive Quake scene behind. Daniel 'a1r-r41d' Göttel requested to be removed from Intel Extreme Masters' current season."
IEM S5 European Championship Group A:
Marcel "k1llsen" Paul
Maciej "Avekkk" Krzykowski
Gareth "GaRpY" Marshall
Michael "winz" Bignet
Related
ESL Announcement
