Natus Vincere is reportedly in talks to sign the FunPlus Phoenix roster that had a successful 2022 Valorant Champions run internationally and domestically.
The Ukrainian organization hinted at the signing in an announcement video for their acceptance into the EMEA partnered league. NAVI also recently released two players left over from their 2022 Valorant roster that failed to break through to international play.
According to a Dot Esports report, the Valorant roster has yet to put pen to paper with NAVI, and one player, Ardis ‘ardiis’ Svarenieks, may try to explore his options elsewhere.
If all the players and org do sign a deal, NAVI’s Valorant roster for the upcoming 2023 season would consist of head coach Erik ‘d00mbr0s’ Sandgren, Dmitry ‘SUYGETSU’ Ilyushin, Pontus ‘Zyppan’ Eek, Kyrylo ‘ANGE1’ Karasov, Andrey ‘Shao’ Kiprsky, and ardiis.
The day we got the @valesports_emea invite pic.twitter.com/5etMzaQtWg
— NAVI (@natusvincere) September 25, 2022
All the players and head coach are still under the FPX banner. The Chinese-based organization did not manage to make it into the Riot Games’ partnered leagues and are open to offers from other teams for their players as first reported by Dexerto.
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FPX roster moving on to the partnered league
Over the course of 2022, this FPX roster qualified for every international tournament possible. The team could not play in the Stage 1 Masters due to travel and visa complications but managed to make it to Masters Copenhagen as the EMEA second seed and qualified to Valorant Champions off of circuit points.
The team won Masters Copenhagen after getting knocked into the lower bracket early on in the Playoff Stage. At Valorant Champions the team placed fourth after a loss to South Korean side DRX.
Domestically, FPX was dominant and only lost to Fnatic and Acend over the course of Stage 1 and Stage 2 Challengers.