Evil Geniuses' maLeK set to miss ESL Pro League Season 15 group stage

Following his absence from Evil Geniuses' match today against Astralis, Evil Geniuses have confirmed that Damien "maLeK" Marcel is set to miss the entirety of ESL Pro League Season 15's Group D due to a "non-COVID related medical treatment." In his place, the team's assistant coach, fellow Frenchman Paolo "Evy" Berbudeau is set to act as the Evil Geniuses' interim coach.

Evy will have big shoes to fill as Evil Geniuses' signing of maLeK was viewed as a coup, with the former G2 coach coming off of a highly successful three year tenure with the international lineup. On the plus side, Evy has worked closely with Evil Geniuses in the past three months, and was briefly an understudy of maLeK from February to June 2020 on G2.

With Evy at the helm, Evil Geniuses unfortunately started Group D on the wrong foot, dropping their opening series to Astralis in a particularly uninspired fashion. One bright side in the series was a strong performance from Vincent "Brehze" Cayonte, putting up a 1.23 rating, his best thus far this year, in the two-map loss.

Unfortunately for North America, maLeK is the second coach to miss the start of ESL Pro League Season 15, with Liquid's Eric "adreN" Hoag missing Group C due to a personal issue.

Evil Geniuses will play ESL Pro League Season 15 with:

• Vincent "Brehze" Cayonte

• Tsvetelin "CeRq" Dimitrov

• Jacky "Stewie2K" Yip

• Timothy "autimatic" Ta

• William "RUSH" Wierzba

• Paolo "Evy" Berbudeau (Interim Coach)

Evil Geniuses will look to course correct against NAVI tomorrow at 01:30PM. While a win seems unlikely against the world number one team, NAVI are also short-staffed as IGL Kirill "Boombl4" Mikhailov is out with COVID-19.