Serbian coach Aleksandar "kassad" Trifunovic announced the end of his partnership with Cloud9 less than six months after he began working with the team. According to the general manager of the esports organization, Henry “Henry” Greer, the reason for this decision was the coach’s disagreement with the in-game leader Alex “ALEX” McMeekin: “You can’t say that someone is to blame for this and that there were bad relations between him and one of the players. Rather, we are talking about stylistic differences between the in-game leader and the style of kassad, which is why too often compromise solutions had to be made.
Currently, Cloud9 has not yet decided who will become the new coach. It's worth considering that their options are quite limited after ESIC banned 37 trainers in September as a result of a high-profile investigation into cheat exploitation. The head of Cloud9 emphasized that they are ready to consider various candidates and try new approaches, since the practice of coaching appeared in CS: GO relatively recently and the question of how to use it most effectively remains open.
Meanwhile, kassad plans to join Extremum – a new Russian team, which may include several more North American players.
