In the community, both eSports and classic sports, there is an opinion (I don’t know how big it is) that players with a good career and titles should finish at their peak. That is, someone wins an International or a Major and his task is not to tarnish his achievements with inevitable declines after this event.
Firstly, on behalf of the player it is stupid, because his career is his personal business project. And at the moment when you have many offers, a big credit of trust, finally you get more money for your presence in the club, and the prime age is short, then you need to squeeze the maximum here and now. It is unknown how much more he will win, but giving up this business looks doubtful.
But here another interested party appears. This is the club itself, which is still someone’s business. And this means that it needs to take and release (fire) players in a timely manner, when it is profitable. That is, for the club, the model in which they get rid of a player at his peak will be the most logical and correct, since old players have high salaries and demands, and from time to time it is necessary to unload the payrolls together with veterans. Now we will consider the moments in which club managers made a bold decision that withstood criticism.
1. Virtus.pro
In 2020, only Solo and No[o]ne remained from the core of the team that had achieved success. Solo was diligently looking for a new Ramzes for carry at that time, and all other positions had to match the star lineup, which had recently been terrifying opponents, and in no case was the task set lower. There were several reshuffles that seemed to have led to the desired result, albeit online. The newly assembled lineup won the incredibly strong Team Secret in the final. But after that, the players forced the youth lineup to take the rap in the online era.
Which led to the main lineup being disbanded. Most likely, they were talking about the fact that they were “too lazy to play rofloturiks” and in general they were only aiming for the International. Glamazda responded promptly and has since been nicknamed “genius” in the community. Perhaps it was there that the club gave up on future victories and signed a roster with Save and epileptic (Odeyalych, my beloved Odeyalych is not a champion again, he is not winning anything again).
But there were many events after that and Glamazda no longer has anything to do with many of them. But the fact remains that after the dissolution of the roster, Solo and No[o]ne left the upper echelon of Dota for a long time and were never able to return, and the club, although it did not become better, repeated its success at TI.
2. Team Liquid
Another club that parted with its star roster, and much more successfully, is Team Liquid. In 2019, their Dota 2 roster reached the final of The International, but in the offseason, the club unexpectedly decided to part with the roster, sold it to the sheiks and signed a new one with Insania, Boxi and Mickey, who formed the backbone of Alliance, who took 16th place at that TI with shame, having failed the draft stage and picked a hero instead of banning him.
Of course, there is no need to talk about the resonance and it was considered that this was a huge failure of the club, but 4 years later, the Liquid roster with the same backbone continues to play in the finals, albeit ineptly losing them, and Kuroky and company sometimes fight abroad for the top 2 region, which exists only thanks to the sheiks, successfully failing qualification after qualification. But the sheiks in this whole story are more likely to get a red nose
3. Navi
Here the story is the opposite, but incredibly profitable for the club. Navi was famous for the fact that 1. The management can be pushed by fans, as it was with Zeus and the captain left to take his first major in his career to another team 2. It will continue to milk its media asset dry, as it was with Dendi.
But what the CS:GO roster players did rather breathed new life into the club. Perfecto and electronic decided to leave for Cloud9 and brought the club not only 2 million green presidents, but most importantly they prompted the star of their roster Simple to pause his career. Of course, there was a combination of factors: the scene was moving to a new game that the player did not like, and he obviously did not like the new teammates and he considered them unworthy of playing with him, and he was wasting time on them, but after a very short period of time the roster without stars won the major and RiyadhMasters, and Simple is already openly being matched with tier-2-3 teams, because no one needed him.