There’s trouble in paradise at Wildcard. The North American team has just bombed out of their first tournament of the season without a single win.
The early exit at FISSURE Playground 1 followed two highly surprising roster moves, which saw the removal of captain Peter “stanislaw” Jarguz and AWPer Love “phzy” Smidebrant.
Sonic speaks out
In an interview with HLTV, Wildcard’s Aran “Sonic” Groesbeek opened up about a turbulent offseason, pointing to internal clashes and major differences in direction within the team and the organisation.
He also admitted he had assumed he was the one on the way out.
– I was under the impression that I was exiting the team before the Austin Major, and then come after, a lot of things were happening behind the scenes. There were some clashes, disagreements, differing visions…
Convinced to stay
Sonic admits to HLTV that it came as a shock for him that the management had decided to bench stanislaw and phzy.
He then revealed that it was his plan to join a new team, however, Wildcard convinced him to stay to keep the core inside the squad, despite “disagreeing at first”.
Most likely due to the valuable VRS points gathered throughout 2025.
– I thought I was the one who was exiting the team, and I made plans to exit the team, and then I guess it went in the direction that stanislaw was being removed from the lineup and phzy was also being removed, and that came as a shock to a lot of us.
– But, funnily enough, I knew about that and I thought everyone knew about that, but they didn’t. I was supposed to go to a different team, I won’t say which, but Wildcard asked me to stay so we could retain the core. I was very disagreeing at first, I didn’t want to do that, but we came to an agreement mutually where I’d remain with the team for the foreseeable future, just to get things in order and help the new guys until the roster can be fully developed, Sonic told HLTV.
HLTV then asked: So do you think your leaving can still happen sometime in the future?
– Absolutely.
