The South Korean esports organisation MVP Project have announced the creation of their brand new Academy team aimed at young players with the potential to make it big.
This will be MVP’s third team, in addition to their main and secondary CS:GO teams.The first member of their Academy team will be Ho-Kyeong “timon” Ahn, who joined the main team after Hyung-Ju “Sound” Nam had to leave for military service.
In our opinion, Academy teams are a fantastic idea. Not only do they give up-and-coming prodigies the chance to make it somewhere in esports, but more often than not, these Academy teams are run by big-name organisations like Fnatic or in this case MVP Project. This not only means that they get the exposure they need, but could also potentially be picked up by that organization’s main team or some other organization altogether. A good example of this would be the time Niclas “PlesseN” Plessen, a member of Fnatic’s Academy team, was a temporary stand-in for them back in April of last year. This not only ensured he gained valuable experience in the spotlight but also it meant that he received some attention, which could potentially interest future teams in picking him up.
If it wasn’t for Academy teams giving young players such an opportunity, chances are they would have to start on unknown teams like the rest of us and might not ever get very far.
In addition to that, having the same popular teams play against each other all the time would make the sport boring with no chance of major upsets like the time Vega Squadron, a low-tier Russian team, beat NiP, one of the best teams in the world. Exciting and unbelievable moments like that would be impossible if we didn’t give untapped talent a chance, which is what makes Academy teams such an important factor of esports.
Images courtesy of Fnatic & Vega Squadron
Esports Insider says: Academy teams should be a staple of every esports organisation because everyone deserves a fair shot at proving their worth and making it big in the scene.