NiP promote THREAT to head coach, pita departs

Ninjas in Pyjamas has said goodbye to CS:GO coach Faruk "pita" Pita and promoted assistant coach Bjorn "THREAT" Pers back to the head coach position.

Chief Operating Officer for NiP, Jonas Gundersen, explained the decision in a post on the organisation's official website.

“The competitive environment of CS:GO is evolving at an incredibly fast pace and it’s not slowing down anytime soon. Pita has done a good job for us but after not finding momentum we have decided that a fresh perspective is needed to adjust to the current state of competitive CS:GO.”

This ends pita's second tenure as coach for NiP after almost two years since initially replacing THREAT. While his previous term saw him guide the team to victory at ESL One Cologne 2014, this glory was not replicated in recent times.

Since 2018, NiP failed to claim any trophies since IEM Oakland 2017 and THREAT returned to the team in October following yet another year without success.

Controversy also struck NiP and pita personally when Robin "Fifflaren" Johansson spoke to Richard Lewis about failings by the org's management and accusations of mismanaging charity funds re-emerged. 

Fifflaren defended pita from those claims, explaining that he would not have had access to the money that some suspected he could have taken.

Legend of the game Patrik "f0rest" Lindberg is expected to leave the roster and rejoin long-term teammate Christopher "GeT_RiGhT" Alesund  on Dignitas following the latter's step down from NiP last year.

Dignitas looks set to unite four of the original Ninjas as Adam "friberg" Friberg and Richard "Xizt" Landström have also been linked to the project.

The fifth is expected to be Norweigian talent Håkon "hallzerk" Fjærli, who was named by Håvard "rain" Nygaard as his bold prediction for 2019.

It is not known if pita will be coaching this new project or will be seeking a new opportunity elsewhere.

Tim "nawwk" Jonasson is the rumoured player to be stepping into NiP while William "draken" Sundin, who has played under both NiP and Fnatic, will be joining GamerLegion in his place.