G2 will miss their superstar sniper as they try to go back-to-back.
As we geared up for a clash of titans in London, unfortunate news has once again hit G2. After Rasmus "HooXi" Nielsen was sidelined from Dallas, Ilya "m0NESY" Osipov will now be missing out on BLAST Premier Spring Finals in London. The Russian sniper was unable to secure a visa for the event.
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UPDATE: Since this article was published, m0NESY has been granted a visa and is traveling to the event. The player hopes to join the team in time for their first match. Read this article for more details.
G2 without m0NESY?
While losing HooXi was already a tough pill to swallow, losing m0NESY is perhaps the biggest blow the team could have taken going into the BLAST Premier Spring Finals. The AWPer has been the absolute best player in the world in 2024 and picked up the MVP award at IEM Dallas. With his dominant AWP presence missing, G2 will likely rely on Nemanja "huNter-" Kovač and Nikola "NiKo" Kovač to shuffle the big green. Both are competent secondary snipers. But replacing his 1.31 rating will be nigh on impossible.
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Who will stand in for G2 at BLAST Premier Spring Finals?
Fans were quick to speculate on a return for GStew. But despite the successful run for Jake "Stewie2k" Yip at Dallas, the team will instead be fielding their coach, Wiktor "TaZ" Wojtas. While TaZ is a legend in his own right, his last professional match came in March of 2023. And his last Tier 1 foray was all the way back at Boston 2018.
Still, his veteran savviness will be put to the test as G2 heads up against Danil "donk" Kryshkovets and Spirit. And more importantly as the coach, he can bring his calming influence and energy similar to Stewie2k. But what does that mean for G2?
Can G2 perform without m0NESY?
The immediate response to that question will be a resounding no. The team scraped through IEM Dallas in terms of average rating and relied on m0NESY and NiKo to pull off miracles. Not only that, but the Sniper has come into his own, bringing in a strong voice that helps the team play around him. NiKo will still put up mega numbers, but what would have been AWP versus AK in the G2-Spirit game will now have to be AK versus AK, putting G2 at a disadvantage. There's some hope regardless, with the team still boasting of the Kovač cousins, but the difficulty just turned up to 11.
