Wildcard hires Polish coach splawik to head new EU academy project
Fresh off their stellar run at the Perfect World Shanghai Major, Wildcard are building a bigger foothold in CS2 by hiring head coach Łukasz "splawik" Jahns to lead the new academy roster.
splawik coached Illuminar Gaming for the majority of the 2024 season, joining the Polish organization in March alongside future Liquid AWPer Roland "ultimate" Tomkowiak. While ultimate left Illuminar in July, splawik and the rest of the team stayed through all of 2024, but the whole division was released at the end of the year.
Before moving to coaching, splawik played competitively as far back as 2017 with teams like PRIDE, Pompa, Turów Zgorzelec, and AVEZ. Coincidentally, he was coached by Vincent "vinS" Jozefiak during his time with PRIDE from October 2018 to April 2019. splawik will now reunite with vinS under the Wildcard banner, as his former coach has been the head coach for the main roster since July. Wildcard also announced today that vinS' contract has been extended through 2025.
Dust2.us has confirmed that Wildcard's academy project will be a European roster. A self-proclaimed roster reporter by the name of Vladislav Gromov, who confirmed splawik as coach last week, has floated several different names being trialed including Giovanni "Wumbo" Türkeli, benched G2 Ares player Dušan "d0jca" Dojčinović, and benched Astralis Talent player Simon "sSen" Solnæs.
Wildcard's main roster performed so well at the Americas RMR that they rocketed up the Valve Global Standings, earning an invite to the BLAST Spring Bounty closed qualifier later this month. They will also compete in ECL NA S49 this month.
