At the end of the week, Vitality announced that Belgian cyber athlete Nabil «Nivera» Benrlit. The 20-year-old player decided to move to Valorant – namely, to the corresponding division of Liquid, where his brother already plays.
The Belgian had been on the Vitality roster for the past six months, but was kept in the reserves after the team decided to revert to a five-man roster in March. This was largely the result of Valve's policy of setting tournament rules that penalize teams for roster changes during ranking tournaments.
However, last year the use of expanded rosters seemed very promising, and Nivera's participation in Vitality was one of the brightest examples. Over the course of several tournaments, the Belgian player usually replaced Kevin «misutaa» Rabier or Richard «shox» Papillon, depending on which cards the team had to play. It was this strategy that allowed the team to win the IEM Beijing-Haidan Europe and then the BLAST Premier Fall Finals, resulting in several weeks at the top of the world rankings in November and December.
However, Nivera's results and the team's overall performance deteriorated in early 2021, and since the spring the player has remained in reserve even as Vitality searched for a replacement for one of its players. Nivera now looks to continue his career at Valorant.