arki Out, NABOBOW In: SAW Sack Coach Following RMR Disappointment

The ESL Challenger League Season 43 champions shake up their coaching staff following their abysmal RMR campaign 

SAW has announced on Twitter that Omar “⁠arki⁠” Chakkor has left the team. Arki, who originally signed for the Portuguese outfit as a player, had been a part of the SAW setup for three years. Daniel “⁠NABOWOW⁠” Brito will be taking over as coach on an interim basis until the end of the season.

arki played on SAW for 850 days and coached them for 283 days.

Unfortunately with the Portuguese side going 0-3 at the RMR something had to change.

arki and his time on SAW will be written in history throughout the Iberian scene. https://t.co/iQUtuXNOrt

— Josh Nathan (@DwegCSGO) April 10, 2023

The decision means Omar “⁠arki⁠” Chakkor will be competing without Ricardo “⁠roman⁠” Oliveira and Christopher “⁠MUTiRiS⁠” Fernandes for the first time since 2018 and 2019, respectively, when they played together under the Giants name before switching to SAW.

During arki’s nine-month coaching stint, the Portuguese team reached their highest-ever rank of No. 20 on the HLTV leaderboard. SAW won numerous regional tournaments, including Elisa Invitational Fall 2022, ESL Challenger League Season 43 Europe, ESL Masters Spain Season 12 Finals, and Master League Portugal X Finals, under archi’s supervision. 

After losing to FTW in the Master League Portugal IX Finals, SAW made sweeping changes to their lineup, with arki being appointed as coach in July 2022. Although the 33-year-old helped SAW qualify for the Regional Major Ranking events for both the IEM Rio and BLAST Paris Majors, the team was unable to qualify for the finals on both occasions. 

“Today we say goodbye to arki. The warrior leaves, as of today, the position of coach of the CS:GO team,” SAW said in their official statement. “In order to try to find a new direction and achieve the progress we are looking for so much, we unanimously and very thoughtfully decided to reorganize the technical team.”

SAW will start life without arki with an ESL Challenger League Season 45 meeting with either HEET or Into the Bin on April 19.

SAW Current Lineup

Christopher “⁠MUTiRiS⁠” Fernandes (Portugal) 

Ricardo “⁠roman⁠” Oliveira (Portugal)

Tiago “⁠JUST⁠” Moura (Portugal)

João “⁠story⁠” Vieira (Portugal)

Michel “⁠ewjerkz⁠” Pinto (Portugal)

Daniel “⁠NABOWOW⁠” Brito ( Portugal, Coach)