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HooXi replaces cadiaN at Astralis; will debut at PGL Astana

BBG News

HooXi is back and will lead Astralis, starting from PGL Astana in May.

Rasmus “HooXi” Nielsen has been selected to compete in his first CS2 tournament since June last year. In May, he will be stepping in for Casper “cadiaN” Møller at the PGL Astana event, as the 29-year-old Danish team leader.

Experts have been advocating for changes within Astralis for a while due to their less-than-impressive performances. Their recent inability to make it to the BLAST Austin Major seems to be the final blow, leading to cadiaN’s departure from the team after only seven months of leadership with Astralis.

“Interesting times”: HooXi returns after nearly a year as cadiaN makes way

On April 22nd, Astralis formally announced some changes. They moved cadiaN to the reserve team and bid farewell to their sports director, Kasper Straube. The reasoning behind these decisions, as stated by Astralis CEO Jakob Hansen, was due to a string of unfavorable results. Last week’s MRQ failure, he noted, was the final blow.

Due to disappointing performances and failing to qualify for Major tournaments, Hansen announced that we have decided to separate from our Sports Director, Kasper Straube, and In-Game Leader, cadiaN. Although Casper has demonstrated professionalism throughout his tenure, the team and he collectively fell short of the expected level of skill. We wish Casper good luck in his future endeavors.

In simpler terms, after the announcement was made public, Cadian chose to be quite mysterious about the benching situation through a concise tweet. His message read, “It seems intriguing. I’ll reveal more details later.

This week, HooXi will be part of our team and get them ready for their comeback game in Kazakhstan on May 10. Excitedly, he mentioned his anticipation to return to the server, as the ex-IGL from G2 is itching to jump back into action after a 10-month hiatus without a team.

Since their triumphant years in the late 2010s, Astralis has experienced a decline in their success. In fact, it’s been five years since they last took home an offline tournament win, as there have been constant changes among their players.

At present, they are ranked 15th in the VRS standings, largely because of their unexpected third-place finish at PGL Cluj-Napoca in February. This achievement didn’t grant them a direct ticket to the Austin Major, unfortunately. Instead, the team was compelled to compete in the MRQ, where they ultimately came up short against underdogs B8 at the final round.

For the upcoming PGL Astana event, the initial matchups haven’t been decided yet. However, don’t miss out on catching HooXi’s Astralis debut scheduled for May 10 during the Swiss phase of the competition.

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2025-04-22 18:12

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