TSM Guide Brings Clarity to Future CS:GO Project

Dominic Kallas, Vice President of the North American esports organization TSM, gave an extensive interview for the Dexerto portal, in which the future CS:GO project was clarified. According to the functionary, the club plans to assemble a strong team, which will take time to stand on a par with the best of the best. In addition, Kallas told reporters that the idea to return to CS:GO arose at the beginning of 2022 and had nothing to do with Riot Games' decision not to include TSM in the list of partners.

We started talking about it inside the club in January. I already reported in May that we were going to look at the European CS:GO team. Whether or not we've been accepted into the affiliate program, we'll be putting together a CS:GO team in 2023. It's more to get the news out as early as possible so we can start the whole process. This should get our fans interested and start building an organic fan base in Europe.

In the conversation, the TSM representative defined the criteria from which the new team will be built. According to Kallas, TSM will look to the strongest players, but will also focus on young talent.

I think we will look at the top 30 according to HLTV. We're not going to recruit a bunch of newbies. I think it could be a mixture of newcomers and experienced players from other teams. I think there's still the idea that we want to match players from relatively the same region just because you have to have the same ideologies, right? This is very important in narrowing down the area we want to spend our time and effort on.

It's not a game that you can get into and do something as a side project. This should be my life's work. So it's a very complex structure to find a general manager, a coach, other specialists, and probably a small team of analysts who also agree with the overall vision.

Recall that in early October, the TSM organization officially announced its plans to return to the CS:GO discipline. The club's management presented a roadmap, according to which they will assemble a new squad in 2023. Then the club announced that it intends to support the team, which will be based in Europe.

TSM was represented in the CS:GO discipline from 2015 to 2017. In particular, the club became famous for its Danish roster, which later became part of Astralis. However, after the sale of the Danish five, TSM's results went downhill. As a result, an attempt to gain a foothold on the North American scene failed, while at the beginning of 2017 the organization sold its roster to Misfits Gaming and left the discipline.