TNL Esports drop Efina, sign RyZzi

Following a disappointing 5th-6th exit in Korea’s VCT 2021 - Stage 1 - Korea - Challengers 1, making the team go back through the open qualifiers, Korean First Strike finalists TNL Esports have made a roster swap. Kim "Efina" Nak-Yeon has left the team, while Jung "RyZzi" Ki-jin, who was with Dplus until very recently, will fill his place.

Efina had been playing with the roster since June. Playing the sentinel role for the team, usually Cypher, he’s put up stats of 199 ACS and 1.05 KD over his VALORANT career so far, as well as 0.99 Rating since that began being tracked at the outset of 2021.

RyZzi steps in to take his place. The highly flexible player has been quite successful, helping aNg DarkHorse to a good First Strike run and leading DWG KIA to top their group in Challengers 2. Whether he’ll be a direct role replacement for Efina remains to be seen - he played Omen and Sage for DK but was on Jett for aNg Darkhorse. That Jett proficiency means TNL have 3 options for that role now, with Yu "TS" Tae-seok and Park "exy" Geun-cheol both having previously played the agent.

For VCT 2021 - Stage 1 - Korea - Challengers 2, TNL will have to play without RyZzi as he did not play the open qualifiers with the team - coach Lee "bail" Sung-jae will stand in for him. This means that, if TNL place top 2 in their group during the event, RyZzi will not debut with the team until Masters. If TNL don’t make the cutoff, he’ll make his first appearance with them at Challengers 3.

TNL Esports are now:

Lee “GODLIKE” Seo-ha Yu “TS” Tae-seok Yeom “eKo” Wang-ryong Park “exy” Geun-cheol Jung “RyZzi” Ki-jin

Lee “bail” Sung-jae (Head coach) Cho “fAwn” Duck-keun (Assistant coach)