NiKo. Device. Dupreeh. Rain. These are some of the greatest CS:GO players in history, but until they teamed up with Finn “Karrigan” Andersen, they were just great contenders. He turned them into champions.

In the first few years of CS:GO, Karrigan didn’t have much of a career to write home about. Playing for teams like Fnatic, Reason Gaming and Mousesports, he didn’t manage to accomplish any great results. But when he got the offer to join the team at the time known as Dignitas (later TSM and Astralis) things started to turn around.

Dignitas at the time was made up of Device, Dupreeh, Cajunb, Xyp9x and FeTiSh, who Karrigan would go on to replace. Back in 2014, they were famous for being a very good lineup that could always reach the semifinals, but they could never manage to go beyond that. Part of the reason for that were lackluster Terrorist sides as well as their infamous choking issues. Once Karrigan came into the lineup, it only took him a few events to take the team that became known as TSM to the finals of a tournament for the first time in their history. This happened at Copenhagen Games in 2015, after beating their fellow Danes, Dignitas in the Lower Bracket Finals. In this game TSM managed to take 9 terrorist rounds to win the match, something that was almost unheard of for the previous iteration of the lineup.

It only took a few more events until TSM finally became champions at the PGL CCS Kick-Off Season Finals, defeating two of the greatest CS:GO teams in history, NiP and Fnatic. This wasn’t just the first CS:GO championship for Karrigan, but also for players such as Device and Dupreeh, who were long overdue for a big CS:GO title. But the success wouldn’t stop there for TSM, as they would go on to win 3 more big events over the course of the spring and summer of 2015. While TSM would only go on to become champions once after this great run of form, nobody can deny that Karrigan took a side that seemed to be stuck in the semifinals forever and turned them into champions.

In 2016 it eventually became clear that the team now known as Astralis needed a new direction. The players seemed to have lost faith in Karrigan as a leader and they ended up benching him in October of 2016. But the story didn’t end there. Only about a week later he would end up joining the less successful, but star studded lineup of FaZe Clan. If you are reading this in October 2017, you know that FaZe is considered to be the best team in the world, but that was far from the case when Karrigan joined. While the FaZe lineup had a lot of great players come through its doors at the time, such as Rain and Allu, the squad at the time was considered nothing more than a group of misfits. They were considered a group of players that were stuck in a form of luxury prison where you would have a great salary, but never accomplish any results. Karrigan seemed determined to change that. While the championships didn’t come straight away, you could immediately see the team benefiting from finally having an actual leader, something that the other members themselves praised a lot in interviews at the time. And as soon as the team got NiKo, another player with a massive amount of talent but no big championships to his name, into the lineup it didn’t take them long to win a title. Once again Karrigan had a duo in NiKo and Rain that was comparable to the one of Device and Dupreeh that he needed to win championships.

At the StarSeries Season 3 Finals, FaZe would win their very first championship, beating Karrigan’s former teammates from Astralis. With that win Karrigan added another trophy to his collection, but for Rain and NiKo, this was their first big title in CS:GO.

It would take a few more roster changes before FaZe became champions again. Removing Allu and Kioshima and replacing them with legendary players Olofmeister and GuardiaN has given FaZe a superteam like we have never seen before in CS:GO and perhaps this will be their era of dominance.

A common criticism of Karrigan is that he is only able to lead good players. While it’s easy to look at the current FaZe lineup on paper and say that it will be easy for them to win championships with that amount of talent, let’s not underestimate Karrigan’s contribution to the team. Device and Dupreeh had never lifted a CS:GO trophy until they were under the leadership of Karrigan. Rain and NiKo had only managed to win smaller events like Acer Predator Masters and Gaming Paradise. Prior to Karrigan joining, FaZe itself was an example of a team that had more than enough firepower to succeed in theory, but without any leadership their success was very limited.

To make an analogy, FC Barcelona have always been a great team in recent history, but they were never as successful as they were under the leadership of Pep Guardiola, a man who has also been criticised for not being able to manage “bad” teams. One thing Guardiola and Karrigan have in common is that no matter how much criticism they receive nobody will be able to take away their accomplishments. And if Karrigan can lead this FaZe squad to dominance and perhaps even a victory at the ELEAGUE Major in 2018, those results are gonna speak for themselves. If you are able to be dominant in what is perhaps the most competitive era in CS:GO history, it doesn’t matter how much talent you have on your team, you deserve a lot of credit, and Karrigan deserves a lot of credit for taking what is indeed very talented players, but being a huge contributing factor in turning them into champions.