Official: SunPayus joins FUT two days after leaving G2
No waiting required. Two days after G2 announced his departure, Álvaro "SunPayus" García already has a new team: FUT made the signing official on 1 October, confirming what sources had been reporting for weeks.
The 27-year-old Spanish AWPer ends a three-month spell without playing. G2 removed him from the starting lineup in June, after the IEM Cologne Major, and he never played another official map for the club.
Who he replaces
SunPayus takes the place of Nikita "cmtry" Samolotov, who moves to the bench. The Ukrainian was an important piece of FUT's PGL Bucharest win in April, but his year has been uneven, averaging a 1.00 rating on LAN, and the team has gone for a sniper with more experience at the top level.
The roster is Dmytro "dem0n" Myroshnychenko, Aulon "Krabeni" Fazlija, Džiugas "dziugss" Steponavičius, Yasin "xfl0ud" Koç and SunPayus himself, with Hungary's András "coolio" Fercsák as coach. Alongside cmtry, Laurențiu "lauNX" Țârlea is also listed on the bench.
Contract terms and length have not been disclosed.
A project already competing near the top
FUT are not a minor destination. The team sits seventh in Europe in the VRS ranking and already knows what it's like to win a big tournament this year. For SunPayus it means starting again in a project with ambitions, without having to drop a level to get minutes back.
The fit also makes competitive sense. At G2 the problem was role: coach sAw explained they wanted a more aggressive AWPer because the team already had other passive players. At FUT, SunPayus arrives as a direct replacement in the same position and into a young, international squad — the kind of environment he already worked in during his time at Heroic.
A debut in Bucharest, the scene of FUT's last big win
His first test will be PGL Masters Bucharest, starting 24 October. The team has around three weeks to integrate him, and the setting could hardly be more symbolic: it's the same city where FUT lifted their title in April.
For the Spanish scene this is good news with no caveats. SunPayus remains the national player with the longest run among the elite, and seeing him back in the starting lineup of a top European team is exactly what he needed after a summer on the bench.
Source: HLTV, FUT Esports, Sheep Esports.