According to sources close to
Sheep Esports — and as reported first by @arivalorantt on X, former
Natus Vincere player Kyrylo "
ANGE1" Karasov will become the team's next head coach for the 2026
VCT season.
This decision follows the player's announcement in a post on X to retire as a professional player. In this post, ANGE1 already expressed his desire to continue in
VALORANT esports as a coach. A wish that didn't take long to come true since his last team decided to trust him for 2026.
Per sources, ANGE1 was not, the only candidate for the position of coach for the Ukrainian organization. After parting ways with Vincent "
Happy" Schopenhauer, NAVI studied several profiles for this role. Among the candidates were Alexander "
alexRr" Frisch, who had won Stage 2 of the EMEA Challengers with Enterprise Esports, and Kirian "
Yaba" Martínez, who had reached an agreement with Movistar KOI in the VCT before
Riot Games decided to end its partnership with the Spanish team.A strong bond between NAVI and its former player
ANGE1 is probably one of, if not the most, experienced player on the VALORANT scene today. His professional gaming career started on Counter-Strike in 2006 when he was only 16 years old. Almost 20 years later, the player wrote his own history in FPS by deciding to leave Counter-Strike in 2020 for VALORANT. He would be part of the European FPX team that would win the Copenhagen Masters in 2022 before playing three seasons with NAVI.
The last two years have been more difficult for ANGE1 and NAVI, who have not achieved their goal of qualifying for an international competition and have failed to meet expectations. This year, the team was formed by Andrei "Shao" Kiprskii, Emirhan "Hiro" Kat, Uğur "Ruxic" Güç, and GianFranco "Koalanoob" Potestio (replaced in the summer by Alex "Alexiiik" Hawlasek), but failed to perform better than a top 4 in the summer split, not enough to play the Champions in Paris. To regain a dominant position in VCT EMEA, NAVI renews its trust in its former IGL, this time as a coach to rebuild a solid team.
For more roster changes, check out our Transfers Hub.
You can also follow every confirmed move and leak throughout the offseason with our Offseason Tracker. Header Photo Credit: Michal Konkol/Riot Games
