From burnout to building CSGO’s Colossus | Exclusive Cloud9 ALEX interview

Ava Thompson-Powell
Featured image, Alex's CSGO comeback
With an incredible year for Counter-Strike in 2020, there’s lots to unpack. Here, we sit down with one of the most well-known players in the CSGO scene.
Alex ‘ALEX’ McMeekin is renowned as one of Counter-Strike’s best IGLs. But after his success with Team Vitality leading into 2020, the Colonial Captain announced that he’d be taking a step back.

Fast-forward to the tail end of the year, and Cloud9 has formed a Colossus. Speaking exclusively with Dexerto, ALEX delved into his time with Vitality and the reason for his departure. After touching on the CSPPA controversy, he looked ahead to Cloud9’s future going into 2021.

Facing 36 weeks’ worth of traveling throughout the year, the star knew that this was something he couldn’t continue long-term. If the current global affairs hadn’t occurred, it was likely that he was due to travel more than the 22-25 weeks the team had initially agreed to reduce it to. Unable to take a proper break or travel, he details how this pushed him back into the scene as usual.

As well as sharing whether he’s team ZywOo or s1mple, we hit on Cloud9’s future. McMeekin doesn’t believe future boot camps are worth it with the current online era of play in regards to LAN matches. While this is less of a problem for France-based Vitality, Cloud9 is based across many different countries, with international flights making this less viable.

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