BIG Academy sign Maden as captain and name sprayxd as coach

BIG have signed Maden for their Counter-Strike 2 academy team, BIG Academy, where he will be the in-game leader. The organization's announcement was reported on October 9, 2026, together with a new coach for the same team: sprayxd, who previously coached Young Ninjas, the academy of Ninjas in Pyjamas.

The signing turns the usual direction of an academy upside down. An academy team normally exists to prepare young players for the main roster. Here a 27-year-old who has played at the top level for years joins the development team instead, to lead it and to learn a new role, while the young players around him learn from him.

Ages and world ranking of October 5, 2026, as published by the leading Counter-Strike news and statistics site.

A captain for the development team

An in-game leader, often shortened to IGL, is the player who calls the team's strategy during each round: where to attack, when to rotate, how to spend the money the team has.

Maden is moving into that role, and BIG present the move as a chance for him to grow into it. Roman Reinhardt, known as Roman R., the organization's Chief Gaming Officer, said in the announcement that the player had chosen a clear direction for his career. In his words, Maden could keep playing at the top level in another role but wants to become an IGL. "We believe he has what it takes."

Reinhardt also described the arrangement as an exchange. The young players of the academy can learn from Maden's experience every day, he said, while Maden receives the organization's trust and support to grow into the job. He added that their conversations had shown how much the player wanted this challenge, and that he looked forward to working with him. Maden, for his part, said in the same announcement that the last stage of his career had not gone as he wanted and that he had chosen a new path. He added that leading a team was something he had wanted for a long time, and that he wants to build something from the ground up with a young roster.

The new five and its coach

Maden joins four players listed with BIG Academy. The lineup below is the one the news and statistics site printed with the announcement.

The ages printed with the announcement show how far apart the members of the team stand. Maden is 27. prosus, the German player who has moved between the academy and the main team twice since 2023, is 23. aZe is 20 and doni 19, and the fifth member of the lineup is under 18. sprayxd, the new coach, is 26, a year younger than his new captain.

prosus's path shows the two-way traffic between the teams. He has twice been called up to the main roster and twice sent back down, and he begins the new chapter as the most experienced of Maden's four teammates.

The form Maden inherits

The figures for the last three months, as printed with the announcement, show what Maden's new teammates have been producing. Rating is the statistics site's own measure of a player's overall performance.

doni, at 19 the youngest of the three adult teammates, posted the best figure. doni and prosus each made 0.76 kills per round, while aZe died least often of the three, 0.60 times per round. Maden arrives with almost no recent sample: three maps in the same period, with a rating of 0.76. At fnatic earlier in the year his rating had been 0.92, the site noted when he became a free agent. In his April statement he described what he would bring to a new team as experience, professionalism and a commitment to keep improving.

Maden's road to the academy

Maden spent what the site called his most productive years with ENCE, from January 2022 to December 2023, a period in which he won IEM Dallas. He then played for Falcons from December 2023 to November 2024, nearly a year the site described as without much success, and had a brief spell with Zero Tenacity, alongside players from his own region, from May to November 2025.

At the start of 2026 he joined fnatic in place of blameF. The move did not settle: the site reported a difficult start and clashes over roles, and he went to the bench after fnatic signed Br4tkO, a fourth Ukrainian player. The benching came in March, and on April 23 he announced that he was a free agent, meaning no team held his contract. He said he was looking for a project with clear ambition, a strong structure and the drive to win, and invited teams building something serious to reach out to him. He played briefly for the illwill mix team before the summer break, and in May he hinted that he wanted to move into the in-game leader role.

The October signing answers that wish. It does so inside an academy rather than on a main roster, which is the part of the deal that makes it unusual.

A coach who knows academies

sprayxd replaces Spiidi, 31, who has left the role to concentrate on his studies, the site reported. The new coach comes from Young Ninjas, which the site called one of the most successful academy setups at promoting players to tier-one teams, the term for the teams at the top of the world ranking.

Young Ninjas no longer play. On July 20, Ninjas in Pyjamas put the project on hold for the foreseeable future and released its players, rud, tein and joeski, and its coach at the time, Zitte. Their last matches in the organization's colors had been played in June, in Series 7 of the European Pro League. The organization said it had made the decision as it evaluated the future of its competitive ecosystem. Players who wore the Young Ninjas jersey include ztr, 22, of FOKUS, nilo, 21, of HEROIC, phzy, 23, of Astralis, and two players of the Ninjas in Pyjamas main team: xKacpersky, 19, and n0te, 20, who was there on a temporary promotion.

In the world ranking of July 13, a week before the project stopped, Young Ninjas stood 129th. sprayxd comes from a development program that sent several players on to established teams, and he will now coach a roster in which the captain is older than he is.

How BIG use their academy

The academy has been a route into BIG's main team. Krimbo came up through the BIG academy system in March 2022 and stayed with the organization until he was benched in October 2025. In that time he played three Majors, between 2022 and 2024, and reached the Legends stage at all three, with a rating of 1.10 over his years in the team, the site reported. After his benching he played only three matches in nearly a year, as a stand-in for Liquid at IEM Krakow 2026. On September 2, 2026, Ninjas in Pyjamas, then 26th in the world ranking, took him on loan from BIG as their in-game leader, in the place left when Snappi was moved to the bench; the report gave no length for the loan.

The distance between the two BIG teams is wide. On August 31, BIG's main team stood 23rd in the world ranking; by October 5 it was 32nd, while BIG Academy stood 223rd. In the same ranking of October 5, Maden's former teams stood far apart too: Falcons fifth, fnatic 40th and ENCE 112th.

Experience placed inside academies

BIG are not the only organization in 2026 to place an experienced figure at the center of an academy. On June 3, FaZe Clan unveiled FaZe Up Next, an academy roster coached by gade, 31, a Danish former player for OpTic, North and BIG who played three Majors and won DreamHack Open Sevilla 2019. RobbaN, 41, was named Head of CS for the FaZe academy division. Three of its players, yoom, Cher1on and klyrO, were aged 19 to 21, and FaZe's main team stood 15th in the world ranking on June 1.

The two models differ in one respect. FaZe placed its experienced figures on the staff, as coach and head of the division. BIG have placed theirs on the server, as a player who leads the round-by-round calls, with a younger coach beside him. Reinhardt said Maden brings years of experience at the highest level and the personal qualities needed to lead a team.

The announcement gave no schedule for BIG Academy's next events.

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