Europe's Top 'Rocket League' Teams Reshuffle and Leave a Star in the Lurch

In Europe, competitive Rocket League has been dominated by the same handful of teams and players for much of its short history. It's a game of musical chairs at the elite level, and while offseason roster shuffles are only to be expected, it's rare that a star player gets left out in the cold. But that's what might have just happened as FlipSid3 Tactics just left one of the game's top players on the sidelines, without a clear next destination for the next season ahead.

Northern Gaming won last month's season three Rocket League Championship Series in dramatic fashion, coming up from the losers' bracket to defeat Mock-It Esports in back-to-back series—with a substitute player, no less. And then Northern's starting roster signed with EnVyUs, a much larger organization, in the time-honored tradition of bigger esports organizations snapping up whole lineups in order to jump to the top of the order.

Now FlipSid3 Tactics, after a disappointing playoffs last month, have made a big change, and it's already delivered results. Yesterday, FlipSid3 announced that David "Miztik" Lawrie will fill the empty third spot on its Rocket League roster, following last week's departure of Marius "gReazymeister" Ranheim. Miztik comes over from Mock-It, whose roster splintered apart following their RLCS runner-up performance.

FlipSid3 underperformed at the RLCS World Championship, finishing 5th-6th overall just six months after their previous season victory, and in spite of some tremendous highlight-worthy plays from gReazymeister.

Consistency was an issue following an extended post-championship break. gReazymeister hadn't played with FlipSid3 since the underwhelming RLCS finals performance—in which he was arguably the most consistent player of the trio, making the case for his replacement a bit more complicated—but his ex-teammates continued on without him.

With Miztik as a fill-in, FlipSid3 Tactics won last month's DreamHack Summer tournament in Jönköping, Sweden. Now they've made the move official with Miztik as a starter, and FlipSid3 claims that the decision to release gReazymeister was mutual, tweeting that they'll "always be family."

Where does this leave gReazymeister? That's the tricky part: Europe's top Rocket League teams have already shuffled so much in the last few weeks, and there's no obvious top-level destination for him. Nor does he have a ton of time to find one.

While he's subbing for EnVyUs at the $75,000 X Games Minneapolis tournament this weekend, as starter Nicolai "Maestro" Bang is on vacation, his professional fate remains to be seen and the competitive calendar is picking-up speed.

Beyond X Games, there's DreamHack Atlanta from July 21-23, NBC's 2v2 tournament soon after, and then qualifiers for season four of the expanded RLCS starting in August. Europe remains the dominant force in Rocket League, but we'll see whether these rejiggered teams can match up against EnVyUs' championship squad… and whether gReazymeister will still have a place among them.