Fnatic sign Derke and Magnum to revitalise Valorant roster

When Fnatic picked up the SUMN FC roster off the back of an impressive First Strike result, many felt they were picking up the best unsigned roster in Europe.

While that may have been true in December, it proved not to be the case certainly by Stage 1 Challengers 3 when the roster failed in their last chance to qualify for the subsequent Masters.

A failure to qualify for the Stage 2 Challenger 1's main event was the final nail in the coffin for the SUMN FC roster and Kostas "tsack" Theodoropoulos and Muhammad "Moe40" Hariff were dropped.

Rumours of who they might signed to replace the two departing players entered slightly dubious territory with CS:GO legend Olof "olofmeister" Kajbjer Gustafsson linked with a switch to Valorant and Fnatic.

Whether there was any genesis to those rumours remains to be seen, and on 8th April we learned that Fnatic had played it much safer announcing that Finnish ex-CS:GO pro Nikita "Derke" Sirmitev, and a relative unknown, Martin "Magnum" Penkov, would be joining the team.

Derke will be the teams AWPer and Jett main, a crucial piece in the meta, and one that Fnatic had lacked tending to run a five rifle setup.

Magnum is regarded as one of the best sentinel players in the CIS region, and will primarily play as Killjoy or Cypher.

The first team we will be able to see the new roster in action is during the open qualifiers for Challengers 2, scheduled for Saturday, 10th April.

The Fnatic Valorant roster now consists of:

• Jake "Boaster" Howlett
• Domagoj "Doma" Fancev
• James "Mistic" Orfila
• Nikita "Derke” Sirmitev
• Martin "Magnum" Peňkov
• Jacob "mini" Harris (Coach)