Mikail "Maikelele" Bill - What Went Wrong?

Mikail "Maikelele" Bill (formerly known as "eksem"; born May 3rd, 1991) is a Swedish professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player and former Counter-Strike 1.6 player. He most recently played the role of a rifler and secondary AWPer for FaZe Clan, his contract with the team had expired days after karrigan joined to replace kioShiMa, who previously replaced Maikelele in the team. He also previously played as a stand-in for former team, Ninjas in Pyjamas, while pyth was recovering from a previous hand injury from August 30th to November 6th. He is currently teamless.

The Big Shot And How It All Start? 

Joining LGB in June 2013, Maikelele, known as “eksem” at this point in his career, was not known as a renowned AWP player in, but as an expendable rifler that the team used in whichever way was needed at any point in time. His ability to use the AWP was not fully utilized in this lineup as player Dennis “dennis” Edman was using it on most occasions. The team had achieved legend status at DreamHack Winter 2013 and top 4 placements in the first season of Fragbite Masters against the likes of the Ninjas in Pyjamas, Astana Dragons, and Clan-Mystik. Maikelele and teammate, and longtime friend, Alexander “SKYTTEN” Carlsson would later be replaced by Simon “twist” Eliasson and Isak “cype” Rydman in February of the following year. These two players would soon be sent on a spiral of lineups before Mikail had settled for a team.

Imbalance And Constant Team Shuffles

Maikelele and his partner in crime SKYTTEN would be sent through rosters of Team Property, SK Gaming, ESG!, and UnWanted over the course of 6 months. These rosters would make dents in events such as DreamHack Summer 2014 and ESPORTSM 2013/2014, but nothing extraordinarily notable. These players would continue to float from team to team until Maikelele was contacted by the Swedish Superpower organization of the scene at the time Ninjas in Pyjamas, to play for them on a trial basis. This was the start of a Counter-Strike saga to remember.

PEAK OF CAREER AND NiP

Maikelele’s biggest opportunity to show his worth came in November 2014, where he and the Ninjas accomplished more than most could have expected. They placed second in the DreamHack Winter 2014 major and the MLG X Games Aspen Invitational and a first place finish in Assembly Winter 2015 over Titan. While the achievements were nice and things were looking good, the team had internal turmoil, which few knew about, not even Maikelele himself for quite a time. Maikelele’s realization was how the team was distancing themselves from him over time, and he was told about his release with little to no real notice. The team seemed content moving forward with the roster they had, but the rest of the team must have felt that things would be difficult to move forward and improving with him on the team with his lack of experience prior to joining the team. Confusion and shock swarmed Mikail’s thoughts, and it left him pondering for years to come.

Big Plans Regarding New Team

After NiP, Maikelele was looking into a new project, an experiment to change how Counter-Strike was played forever. Originally, it was Maikelele and Adil “ScreaM” Benrlitom at the head of choosing the upcoming Team Kinguin roster, where they approached the recently team-less Spencer “Hiko” Martin and Tyler “Skadoodle” Latham, and LGB’s own Norwegian star Havard “rain” Nygaard. The plan was to have Hiko and Skadoodle make their way over to Europe to live and play from there, however it was Hiko who backed out of the deal last second for obvious reasons. This left the Mikail and Adil some thinking to do as they had time to scout a little while longer. They ultimately decided on AWP player Ricardo “fox” Pacheco and, funnily enough, SKYTTEN, later to be replaced by another former teammate of Maikelele’s, Dennis. This would be one of the first successful international lineups in the CS:GO scene, making notable LAN events such as DreamHack Open Summer 2015, the FACEIT 2015 Stage 2 Finals, and legend status of ESL One: Cologne 2015.

Building Up G2 Esports To FaZe Signing !!

Upon settling in the G2 Esports organization, the team had lost their star player in ScreaM to Ex6TenZ’s Titan less than 2 weeks after joining, and had decided on inducting Joakim “jkaem” Myrbostad into the team for the upcoming major. Maikelele, Fox, Rain, Dennis, and Jkaem would be the team to achieve top 4 at the DreamHack 2015 Cluj-Napoca major, conquering the likes of Mousesports and Virtus.pro. The team’s loss to Team EnVyUs in the semifinals was a heartbreaking defeat, where a victory in any of the 4 overtimes on the second map, Inferno, would’ve secured them a space in the finals against Natus Vincere. Maikelele’s performance in this semifinal was less than desirable, and he finds himself to blame for the loss, wishing he could have done more for his team that needed him so. An explosive performance in this year from Dennis would grant him a spot on Fnatic in place of in-game leader Markus “pronax” Wallsten, where Philip “aizy” Aistrup would take his place that same day. This would be the roster to be signed by Call of Duty’s own FaZe Clan.

FaZe Clan Mess-up?

However, he was removed from the core of that team in April of 2016 and didn’t return to activity until August of that year when he played as a stand-in for his former NiP team and helped them win the $300,000 SL i-League StarSeries Season 2 finals.
Speaking about his surprise removal from FaZe, Maikelele reveals that he was given an impossible choice and decided to step away from the team.

• FaZe hired a new guy […] he called me like “we need to have a meeting with you and ZBM, the manager, and RobbaN, the coach, and some of the FaZe owners.” So I went to the meeting and they sat down and they said “do you want to kick you or fox?” – they asked me – and I said “I don’t wanna kick anyone” and then they said like “you have to choose. If you have to choose, and you have to choose, who would you pick?”
• I was like “I still wanna play so… fox I guess.” But at that time I didn’t think either me or fox was the problem in that team, we had one other player in the team that was more of a problem in my point of view that we had to change, so they asked me “yeah but who do you want to kick, you or fox?”
• I remember after this meeting I came to the hotel and I was sharing a room with our manager ZBM […] and I said to him “I’m going to leave the team, this is bullshit” so I called rain and he came to the room and he said “what’s up?” and I said “I’m gonna step out from the roster” and he said “yeah that’s probably the best thing to happen right now”  […] if he wanted me to stay then I would have stayed.

Maikelele remained with NiP as a stand-in until November 2016 and then stayed relatively quiet until he returned as a part of a new international Dignitas team that featured some of his former Kinguin/G2/FaZe teammates in March 2017.
After only 3 months with Dignitas Maikelele was unexpectedly removed from the team and has once again stayed fairly inactive ever since, with only a brief spell in Red Reserve to speak of.
The Swedish is currently playing with the likes of 3 time Major Champion Markus ‘pronax’ Wallsten and other well known Swedish players – he hopes to return to the pro scene some time soon.

Future?

Currently Maik is focusing on his personal life and taking a break from professional cs scene but on the side he is still actively practicing on his Twitch Stream playing with his subs and fans and giving away skins and stuff. I just hope for the best for him. maybe?