di^ to stand in for ML at ESEA S23 GC
Diane "di^" Tran will play for Muffin Lightning at the ESEA Season 23 Global Challenge as Jack "arKimonday" Kastner was a no-show.
The tournament which is taking place in Burbank, California is set to begin today and Muffin Lightning are one of the two teams who were invited to the tournament after BigGods and VG.CyberZen had visa issues and couldn't travel to the US.
Muffin Lightning has had their own share of trouble as they learned Jack "arKimonday" Kastner wouldn't show up for the event and the team had to find a quick replacement for him. Consequently arKimonday has received a 100-year ban on ESEA.
di^ will play for Muffin Lightning
Diane "di^" Tran of CLG Red will be the substitute player for the North American team and Samuel "SileNt" Portillo has released a statement regarding the matter:
"First off, this is just a regular event for us; so thankfully ESEA allowed us to get a stand-in since four of us were already here at the hotel. I'm sure if it was a chance (at qualifiying for) the pro league we were f*cked." SileNt said in his statement.
"Second, obviously we couldn't get any kind of pros or current premier players who played last season. So we had a few options to pick from and we decided to go with Diane.
Finally to explain a bit of him dodging, arKimonday clearly wanted to attend the LAN when we first got invited since he signed all the stuff ESEA gave us to book his flight. A week before the LAN he started acting a bit sketchy saying he didn't want to go to the LAN and he might dodge. This worried us a bit but we didn't think he would actually dodge since he did similar things before our LAN at the Minor.
At the end of the day arKimonday is a loser for dodging but it's best for the team. He was a huge problem for a long time but we wanted to give him another shot. Besides let's be honest we won't be losing much firepower with him gone; if anything we'll have more"
Muffin Lightning will have the following lineup in Burbank:
Samuel "SileNt" Portillo
The ESEA Season 23 Global Challenge kicks off today with the match between Kinguin and LDLC. To see the full schedule and groups, check out our viewer's guide.
BenjaCS is a staff writer at HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter.
Samuel 'SileNt' Portillo 
Age: 21 Team: Muffin Lightning Rating 1.0: 0.94 Maps played: 244 KPR: 0.67 DPR: 0.74 
LDLC #29 
Kévin 'Ex6TenZ' DroolansAntoine 'to1nou' Pirard
Alex 'ALEX' McMeekin
Valentin 'mistou' BalbastroAlexandre 'xms' Forté 
Kinguin #21 Grzegorz 'SZPERO' DziamałekKarol 'rallen' RodowiczMichał 'MICHU' MüllerMikołaj 'mouz' KarolewskiDamian 'Furlan' Kislowski 
BigGods #130 Thiago 'tifa' FrançaPaulo 'land1n' FelipeDenis 'dzt' FischerAlef 'tatazin' PereiraFelipe 'delboNi' Delboni Muffin Lightning #52 Samuel 'SileNt' PortilloJoshua 'sancz' BallengerAdam 'aKis' KisseberthRyan 'ichibaNNN' ColucciDiane 'di^' Tran Jack 'arKimonday' Kastner 
Age: 27 Team: No team Rating 1.0: 0.87 Maps played: 25 KPR: 0.62 DPR: 0.73 
Diane 'di^' Tran 
Age: 21 Team: CLG Red Rating 1.0: 1.04 Maps played: 68 KPR: 0.71 DPR: 0.67 Adam 'aKis' Kisseberth 
Age: 24 Team: Muffin Lightning Rating 1.0: 0.94 Maps played: 99 KPR: 0.67 DPR: 0.72 CLG Red #48 Diane 'di^' TranBenita 'bENITA' Novshadian
Stephanie 'missharvey' HarveyChristine 'potter' ChiKlaudia 'klaudia' Beczkiewicz Ryan 'ichibaNNN' Colucci 
Age: 22 Team: Muffin Lightning Rating 1.0: 0.94 Maps played: 39 KPR: 0.67 DPR: 0.72 
VG.CyberZen #26 Bin 'Savage' LiuBingYuan 'tb' LiZhuo 'advent' LiangWeiJie 'zhokiNg' ZhongKunHua 'LOVEYY' Bai Joshua 'sancz' Ballenger 
Age: 24 Team: Muffin Lightning Rating 1.0: 0.98 Maps played: 258 KPR: 0.70 DPR: 0.70