After several weeks of uncertainty, the North American organization TSM returned to the CS:GO professional scene on August 29. But unlike last time, TSM is funding a European squad as opposed to creating a NA initiative. In addition to former Cloud9 supporter Timofey “interz” Yakushin and French veteran Audric “JACKZ” Jug, the team also includes star entry fragger Cai “CYPHER” Wilson, Danish veteran Valdemar “valde” Bjrn Vangs, and Romanian newbie Mădălin-Andrei “MoDo” Mirea. Rémy “XTQZZZ” Quoniam, a former head coach for G2 and Vitality, will guide the group of five players.
TSM had been preparing to come back to Counter-Strike esports since 2022 and the roster was leaked on July 24. The team had contractual disagreements with the organization, though, according to a report by Blix on July 31, and head coach XTQZZZ even confirmed that he had pulled away from the project. It seems, however, that TSM and the squad talked over and solved whatever issues they had in the past few weeks.
Little is known about the actual roles the players will be filling under the TSM banner, other than MoDo, who is expected to be the primary AWPer, and CYPHER, who is expected to keep playing as an aggressive rifler who goes first in a lot of set executions. The in-game leadership will likely be taken on by valde as he filled this role on teams such as North and OG, but that is yet to be confirmed.
It’s currently unclear when TSM will debut again in CS:GO as they aren’t qualified for any tier-one tournaments in the foreseeable future. Given the amount of tier-two online cups these days, though, TSM will likely be invited to one of those soon.
As we enter the final days of CS:GO due to CS2‘s impending release this summer, we expect to see more of TSM in the next game.