ATK duo reunite on Young Ninjas

Former ATK duo Gareth "MisteM" Ries and Daniel "sprayxd" Kogan have been announced as key additions to the new international Young Ninjas roster. The move sees the two highly regarded imports to the NA scene reunite following the demise of the highly successful ATK roster which was released on July 1st.

Since then, the core of that team would go on to form M80, which is regarded as one of the top squads in the region. However, MisteM and sprayxd were left out of that move, with MisteM going on to briefly playing with Limitless in NA while sprayxd returned to Israel, working briefly with a number of Israeli mixteams in the European scene.

With this signing, MisteM will be able to continue his career in Europe, a region with far more upward mobility compared to NA and especially South Africa. To that end, the roster NIP have assembled for their academy has a number of interesting prospects.

The most notable name of MisteM and sprayxd's teammates is Max "maxster" Jansson, a 19-year-old Swedish player who elicited interest from Aleksandar "kassad" Trifunović to join BLEED before the deal fell apart due to RMR-related technicalities.

Maoz "BluePho3nix" Paz, meanwhile is the non-Swedish player on the team. The Israeli's most notable achievement to date was attending the IEM Major Rio APAC RMR, where his Israeli-Russian squad, JiJieHao International, almost made the Major before having their dreams shattered in a close series versus Grayhound.

The final two pieces, Jacob "jocab" Nerheden and Leo "Silence" Ingvarsson, are two upcoming Swedish talents who recently played for The Prodigies Sweden and 7AM, respectively. While the two of them have the least experience of any players on this roster, their schedules in 2023 were remarkably busy, meaning they come into 2024 with a high level of match fitness. This is something that should help MisteM as he shakes off the rust from three months of relative inactivity.

With these additions, Young Ninjas are now:

• Max "maxster" Jansson

• Gareth "MisteM" Ries

• Maoz "BluePho3nix" Paz

• Jacob "jocab" Nerheden

• Leo "Silence" Ingvarsson

• Daniel "sprayxd" Kogan (Coach)