Team Falcons have officially benched Damjan “kyxsan” Stoilkovski, bringing to an end the North Macedonian’s 16-month stint as the team’s in-game leader. The announcement comes immediately following IEM Rio 2026, where Falcons reached the semifinals before falling 2-0 to Team Spirit — a result that did little to change the apparent direction the organisation had already chosen.
The move had been an open secret for weeks. French insider KRL first reported that Finn “karrigan” Andersen was set to leave FaZe Clan and join Falcons, with multiple sources including HLTV corroborating the story. FaZe’s dismal 2026 — culminating in a failure to qualify for the IEM Cologne Major for the first time in the organisation’s Counter-Strike history — had already made karrigan’s departure feel inevitable. Falcons, already qualified for Cologne, become his landing spot.
For kyxsan, the timing is brutal. He handled the rumour circus at IEM Rio with class, telling HLTV he stayed focused on playing rather than the noise around him. The team went on to beat Spirit in groups and reach the semis. It wasn’t enough to save his spot.
PROJECTED FALCONS ROSTER — IEM COLOGNE MAJOR 2026
karrigan IGL
NiKo Rifler
m0NESY AWPer
TeSeS Rifler
kyousuke Rifler
zonic Coach
kyxsan IGL Benched
The karrigan-NiKo-zonic reunion is genuinely compelling on paper. karrigan and zonic last worked together at Astralis in 2016, and NiKo has since publicly called karrigan the best IGL he has ever played under — a striking admission given the history between the two, with FaZe reportedly falling apart in 2018 partly because NiKo took over the IGL role after questioning karrigan’s calls. Whether that history is truly buried remains one of the more interesting subplots heading into Cologne.
CS2BEt.io Our read on this move
On paper this sounds exciting. In practice, we have real doubts. The timing is the first problem — you don’t swap your IGL weeks before a Major and expect things to click immediately. Chemistry, defaults, map vetoes, mid-round structure — all of that needs to be rebuilt from scratch. Falcons have the firepower to reach the semifinals on raw talent alone, but winning a Major with a brand new IGL in the building is a tall order.
Then there’s karrigan himself. His numbers at FaZe were poor — a 0.89 rating on 2,694 maps — and the FaZe project collapsed around him. Now he walks into a roster with NiKo and m0NESY, two of the biggest personalities in the game. NiKo is notoriously demanding and has historically had friction with IGLs who don’t command his respect. m0NESY is young, talented, and used to a certain style of play. Keeping both happy while implementing a new system is not a small ask, even for a leader of karrigan’s experience.
karrigan is 36. This is not a move built for the long term. If it works, it works for the next 12–18 months — and then Falcons will face the same question again. It feels less like a strategic rebuild and more like a headline move. Which leads us to wonder whether the Saudi ownership at Falcons is more interested in having an iconic name on the roster than in the most rational path to a title. Visibility over patience.
That said — Falcons are now undeniably more watchable. They were already the most unpredictable team in tier-one CS2, capable of beating Vitality on a good day and losing to 3DMAX on a bad one. Add karrigan into that chaos and you have a team that could do anything at Cologne. Flop in groups or go deep — both feel equally plausible. Don’t bet on them to lift the trophy. But absolutely watch them.
