Owen ‘smooya’ Butterfield has announced that he returned to free agency. smooya was associated with the TIGER roster, alongside Marco ‘Snappi’ Pfeiffer from a report via Dekay. However, the roster seems to prefer to keep their current line-up after a resurgence in performance. The UK player now returns to free agency and will look for offers in Europe and North America.
Smooya once again returns to free agency after TIGER signing fizzles out. (Photo courtesy Adela-Sznajder / ESL)
Since smooya’s departure from Chaos’ CS:GO roster on March 30th, he had signed with TIGER, a Mongolian based team. However, their management has changed their mind and now prefers to keep their current squad. The Mongolian side just found success in the recent ESL Road to Rio Asia tournament. This has launched them into first place in the Asian Regional Major Rankings. Dropping their players for Snappi and smooya would cost them 1600 points in the rankings. Therefore, TIGER is keeping their roster. Instead, TIGER has loaned Snappi to Astralis, temporarily replacing Andreas “Xyp9x” Højsleth.
With smooya having no clear destination, he has been released from his contract. He will now only entertain offers from Europe and North America. Perhaps this is a sign of his irritations with the TIGER signing.
Although smooya may have troubles trying to find a team in North America. The UK AWPer departed Chaos shortly after the first week of FLASHPOINT 1 due to visa issues. With the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the world, the United States restricted their P1 visa department. Although, The U.S is enabling its P1 visa process throughout June. We may see European imports return stateside soon.
