The 2023-24 VALORANT off-season hasn’t been without its surprises, from the lack of movement from the world champions to American players signing to Pacific teams. Jaccob “yay” Whiteaker made a big move to BLEED as an import, and T1 didn’t want to feel left out.
T1 signed American initiator player Daniel “Rossy” Abedrabbo on Nov. 9, formerly of Turtle Troop, FaZe Clan, and TSM. This marks T1’s fourth signing of the off-season, now rocking a seven-man roster it can potentially experiment with heading into VCT 2024.
Rossy’s been around the NA VALORANT scene for a long time, from early 2021 on Immortals to joining big organizations like TSM and FaZe Clan. His play on initiators like Breach and KAY/O is what made him successful, reaching the top tier in North America twice. When franchising came along, he stuck with FaZe Clan before eventually joining the unsigned team Turtle Troop as they looked to keep up an underdog 2023 season in NA Challengers.
Despite Rossy helping the team win the relegation tournament to secure their spot in the Challengers scene for 2024, the off-season opened up tons of options. T1 was one of those options, and it wasn’t dissuaded by adding more depth to its initiator pool while also bringing in an import. Joseph “ban” Seungmin Oh was an American import for all of T1’s 2023 season, plus the current roster has a lot of experience playing with NA players, like Ha “Sayaplayer” Jung-woo, Lee “Carpe” Jae-hyeok, and Son “xeta” Seon-ho.
Rossy shouldn’t have a tough time getting to grips with the team, but it remains to be seen if he’ll get much playing time. VALORANT has shown to be a game where substitute players are a luxury most teams can’t afford. T1 effectively already has a starting five, and all roles are filled out well, especially with the signing of Lee “k1Ng” Seung-won.
Because Rossy isn’t Korean, he will likely have the same communication issues to overcome as new signing Kevin “xccurate” Susanto. T1 seems to be leaning away from a full Korean roster, however, so this signing could help the team’s flexibility down the line.
