Ninjas in Pajamas are introducing new changes to the starting five to try and deal with the problem of not having a proper leader in the team. Hampus "hampus" Poser is out of the team, while Patrick "es3tag" Hansen will play again for NiP.
NiP, which is currently out of the top 20 teams in the world on the HLTV ranking (they occupy the 21st position), has been struggling for some time with achieving satisfactory results in major tournaments.
Since hampus took over the role of IGL in June after Aleksi "Aleksib" Virolainen moved to Na'Vi, they were eliminated at IEM Cologne at the start of the tournament where they were defeated first by FaZe and then by Astralis, while in ESL Pro The league experienced unexpected defeats from teams FURIA and GamerLegion.
This is also the second time that Hampus will be on the bench in the last year, he was replaced at the beginning of the year by Kristian "k0nfig" Wienecke, although at that time the reason for the change was of a health nature and Hampus was technically on sick leave.
Es3tag was benched back in December of last year when NiP was going through another series of major changes, and played his last competitive matches in January of this year when he stepped in as a substitute for FaZe during the group stage of Spring BLAST, when helped them achieve the maximum performance in the group and register three victories.
He will play his first match since returning to NiP on Thursday when the Ninjas play a big Nordic derby against Fnatic in the first round of the Roobet Cup.
