Counter Strike Global Offensive has seen its fair share of teams and players that have left their mark in the record books. Be that as it may, when one ultimately sits down to analyze all the legacies that have left their mark on the professional scene, it becomes clear that one stands out amidst all the endless noise, the one left by Fnatic under Pronax’s leadership. The Pronax led Fnatic roster utilized an amalgamation of longevity and dominance in order to give rise to the greatest Counter Strike Global Offensive team of all time.

However, as happens to be in the case of any greatest teams of all time, luck did play a significant factor in the run that enabled Fnatic to place themselves into the history books. The way luck factored into this lineup was through the building of the roster. Fnatic managed to get lucky enough to pick up two players, Krimz and Olofmeister, who at two separate times would be considered the best players in the world and proceeded to get lucky enough that their peaks simply followed back to back.

The Support Star

Fnatic’s initial breakthrough into the top of the scene with this roster was off the back of a completely different star duo than the one the community normally associates with Fnatic. If one were to look at the totality of the lifespan of Fnatic, it would become clear that the greatest duo on this team was the Olofmeister Krimz duo; however, for the first few months, the actual star duo of the team was Krimz and Jw.

JW’s initial presence as a star on the Fnatic roster brought a wholly unique skillset to the role of star player. Rather than bringing a star level impact as a conventional playmaker, JW chose to emerge as one of the world’s most unconventional playmakers. JW’s game perfectly blended aggression with unpredictability and subsequently gave rise to a wildcard presence which propelled Fnatic to heights that they hadn’t touched for quite a while. While JW was a fantastic player to have as a star level presence within the Fnatic team, he was not the main reason that Fnatic obtained such high levels of success initially, the credit for that lies to the man who was the high powered engine driving them forwards, Krimz.

Krimz’ early period as the primary star on the Fnatic roster was without a doubt the primary reason that the Fnatic team’s success spanned such a long period of time. The reason that Krimz had such a huge impact on their level of success was due to the fact that for the early period of this Fnatic roster lifespan Krimz was not only the best player in the world, but managed to reach said accolade all whilst operating out of the support role.

The role of support in Counter Strike comes with a lot of controversy, as a lot of people dispute whether it truly exists or not, but in my eyes a support player is the one who sacrifices the most in his gameplays through different ways, such as taking the least popular yet most integral positions on most maps, such as bomb site anchoring on CT sides. These sacrifices by Krimz combined with his in game play as the best player in the world gave Fnatic a two fold advantage that for the first few months enabled them to stay on top of the world.

Despite Krimz’s high level of play throughout his career, he was unable to maintain his peak as the world’s best player for too long and slightly degraded in terms of skill. Be that as it may, that slight dip in form also came alongside Olofmeister’s rise in form to become not only Fnatic’s primary star, but also quite possibly the greatest player in Counter Strike Global Offensive’s history.

Olof’s Kingdom

The principle reason that Fnatic managed to go down as the greatest team of all time was due to the longevity of their time period at the top of the food chain. From Dreamhack Winter 2014, a tournament they chose to resign from, they consistently made top fours up until their final event of Dreamhack Cluj Napoca. The primary factor that contributed to this extreme chain of success was the high level of gameplay that Olofmeister brought to the team. Krimz’s fall off in skill was almost immediately overlapped by Olofmeister kicking into the prime of his career, and as such, Fnatic’s prime at the top of the scene was artificially lengthened.

Over the time period during which Olofmeister reigned at the top of the Counter Strike food chain, he managed to accomplish things that few others have ever done in Counter Strike Global Offensive. He managed to bring not only two majors into Fnatic’s trophy case, but also a slew of other titles, ones which Fnatic would’ve undoubtedly been hard pressed to secure without his consistent MVP presence throughout.

The extra cherry on top that makes this period even sweeter was the fact that by maintaining such a high level of play throughout this period, Olofmeister, without a doubt, managed to deny some of the greatest players to ever play the game chances at titles. Olofmeister’s presence at the top of the scene played a contributing factor in Guardian’s inability to secure a high level title win until ESL NYC, and he undoubtedly prevented others as well. Olofmeister’s long term presence as the best player in the world is the main engine that drove the Fnatic roster to the heights that they reached, and without his high level playmaking, key parts of the Fnatic legacy would simply never come to fruition.

Luck Gives Rise to Greatness

In summation, with a retrospective look at the complete legacy of the Pronax Fnatic roster, it becomes clear that luck played a relatively significant part in their rise to becoming the greatest Counter Strike Global Offensive team of all time. No, this luck is not the luck that manifests itself through lucky breaks within the actual server; rather, this type of luck manifested itself in the ways that the primes of certain players overlapped. The first period of the Fnatic roster could be summed up as the Krimz JW show, a period in time where those two operated as the primary two stars on the team, flanked alongside by good performances from Olof and Flusha. While JW’s presence was significant, it without a doubt paled in comparison to the impact that Krimz was generating, who was playing as the best player in the world all whilst taking the hardest and most key positions on maps.

While it is rare enough that a team gets the best player in the world one time, it is even scarcer that the same team and roster has another one of their players transition to becoming the best player in the world just as the former best player in the world falls off his perch. Not only is this unheard of, but the entire concept of transitioning star identities within the same roster is extremely rare, as usually teams have to completely change their rosters before changing identities so drastically. These reasons speak to why I claim that luck played a significant part in the Fnatic roster becoming the greatest in the world.

The fact of the matter is that if any of these events happen even slightly differently, then the greatest Counter Strike Global Offensive team of all time might never have reached the peaks that they did. As such I am glad it played out the way it did.