Extra Salt now ahead of Cloud9 in CS:GO World Rankings

We've been following the CS:GO esports exploits of Johnny "⁠JT⁠" Theodosiou, Aran "⁠Sonic⁠" Groesbeek and coach Tiaan "⁠T.c⁠" Coertzen since their ATK Arena days (and Bravado Gaming before that). The team joined Cloud9's international CS:GO roster and we interviewed T.c. back in January 2020.

Last year, Cloud9 announced they would be rebuilding their CS:GO roster, and following some incidents, the player contracts were terminated. Then, in December last year, the ex-Cloud9 players joined the North American organization Extra Salt.

Extra Salt tops Cloud9

The current Extra Salt roster includes previous Cloud9 players JT, oSee and Sonic as well as their coach T.c. In this week's HLTV World Rankings update, it was revealed that Extra Salt is now ranked above the current Cloud9 team.

Extra Salt sits in 21st place following their win at DreamHack Open March North America, while Cloud9's Colossus has dropped to 26th place.

Keep in mind that Cloud9 threw a whole lot of money at their new CS:GO roster. This includes one of the biggest signings in CS:GO esports history with 24-year-old Danish player, Patrick "⁠es3tag⁠" Hansen on a three-year contract worth roughly R35 million.

Following Extra Salt's win, Sonic was asked about the chance of his team surpassing Cloud9 in the rankings, and he simply said: "Expected".

While one should never relish in the misfortune of others, for many of our readers the success of the South Africans is the real news here. The team with South African players, who were removed from Cloud9 when "The Colossus" formed, now sits comfortably ahead of their previous organization.

It goes to show that throwing millions of Dollars at a team doesn't necessarily bring success.

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