Among all of the countries in the world, Sweden is the most iconic when it comes to the game of Counter-Strike. Throughout every iteration and year, they have almost always had one of, if not the best teams in the world. Their talent and teamplay was legendary and some of the greatest epochs were written by Swedish lineups. In the modern era however, Sweden’s place as the best Counter-Strike country in the world has disappeared. The last time a Swedish team could be considered to be the best in the world was early 2016 when Fnatic had the run of six LAN victories. Since then, Sweden has slowly declined in the past few years as Fnatic and NiP lost their way trying to recreate the glories of the past. Once that approach no longer became tenable, both teams have tried to take up younger talent to the next level. Within this shift of generations, Jonas “Lekr0” Olofsson’s rise from disposable pawn to leader has come to represent a new generation of Swedish players that are now rising to the top.

The first time anyone had heard of Lekr0 on the international stage was at DreamHack Masters Malmo in 2016. Before that tournament, GODSENT had picked up Lekr0 based on the recommendation of Simon “twist” Eliasson and Markus “pronax” Wallsten. That tournament was a revelation as GODSENT surprised the world and made a deep run into the tournament making it to the semifinals where they lost to domestic rivals NiP. During that run, Lekr0 had been a revelation. An incredible skilled player who was the second star of the team after twist and had incredible highlight rounds. However like many other rookie talents, he wasn’t able to replicate that performance going forward.

DreamHack Malmo was to be the apex of GODSENT’s achievements as an organization and no subsequent lineup had ever gotten close to reaching those results. So while the tournament had put Lekr0 on the map, he was still far away from being recognized as a top player in the Swedish scene. At the end of the day, he was just a young rookie and soon to be a pawn in the game of the Fnatic shuffle. The top squads of Sweden were filled with legends. Fnatic still had players like: Freddy “KRIMZ” Johansson, Jesper “JW” Wecksell, Dennis “dennis” Edman, Olof “olofmeister” Kajbjer, and Robin “flusha” Ronnquist. Four out of the five of those players were part of the greatest lineup of all time.

As for NiP, they still believed in the core four of: Patrik “f0rest” Lindberg, Christopher “GeT_RiGhT” Alesund, Adam “friberg” Friberg, and Richard “Xizt” Landstrom. Neither of the top Swedish teams were interested in picking up new talents and it was only the Fnatic Schism of 2016 that caused the shuffles.

Fnatic during that time had been eclipsed by the Luminosity Squad as the best team in the world. While they were still consistently getting top fours at various events, the results were untenable. At the same time olofmeister had been dealing with his injuries during this time, which may have exacerbated the internal issues. Whatever the case, by the end of ELeague Season 1, the team decided to split up with Olofmeister and dennis staying on Fnatic while KRIMZ, flusha, and JW reunited with pronax to play on GODSENT.

As for Lekr0, he was one of the players along with twist that was traded over to Fnatic. The ensuing results were terrible for both sides and after two months another move was initiated. The actual strife was between olofmeister/dennis and JW/flusha. KRIMZ was in the middle and decided to go back to Fnatic. So after two months, Lekr0 was once again traded back to GODSENT. During this period, he was merely a pawn in Fnatic’s chess game. A piece that was to be traded about for better options on the board.

However, change was coming. After the Swedish shuffles finished, Lekr0 went back to play under GODSENT. During that period, he continued to grind and improve himself. In the meantime, both NiP and Fnatic started to slowly realize that the old ways weren’t working. Fnatic had reunited the Dennis line-up of early 2016 in 2017, but were never able to come back to the top. As for NiP, their plan of changing the fifth stopped working and they finally removed friberg in 2017. In his place, they recruited Fredrik “REZ” Sterner. It was a seismic shift in NiP’s attitude towards how they were to build towards the future.

Fnatic also came to a similar realization. After the PGL Krakow Major, the Fnatic squad split up. Dennis went to GODSENT. Olofmeister went to FaZe. In their place, the Fnatic squad decided to bet on the young. They recruited Maikil “Golden” Selim as their in-game leader. He had previously been the in-game leader for the Fnatic academy squad and the team decided to give him the wheel. Lekr0 also came back to Fnatic.

The two young players reinvigorated the squad. The team’s identity came together under Golden and Lekr0 became a secondary star on the squad. Together they had multiple top results together as they got top four at ESL Proleague Season 6 Finals and ECS Season 4 finals at the end of 2017. At the beginning of 2018, they got top four at the ELeague Boston Major, bombed at Starladder i-League Season 4, but then went on to win IEM World Championship and WESG.

Despite the results, problems were brewing in the Fnatic camp as rumors spread that Golden was to be kicked from the roster. These sprang about after their loss at Starladder and it was only the victories at IEM World Championship and WESG that kept him in the team. Golden even semi-confirmed the rumors with his infamous tweet

https://twitter.com/goldenmajk/status/975368485546020864

As for Lekr0, it’s unclear as to whether or not he was removed or left of his own volition. Whatever the case, NiP and Fnatic made a trade as Lekr0 joined NiP and William “draken” Sundin went to Fnatic.

For NiP, this was a brilliant trade. Draken had been a part of the team for over an year and had been unable to improve as an AWPer. Lekr0 on the other hand had gradually improved over time and was one of the star players of Fnatic. While they no longer had a primary AWPer, the differential between Lekr0 and draken was substantial.

However, NiP still had a leader issue. Earlier in that year, NiP were able to recruit Dennis from GODSENT and he had been temporarily doing the in-game leader role despite not wanting to do it. This issue hit critical mass after ESL Cologne 2018. It was at that point that Lekr0 decided to pick up the in-game leader role as he recalls in his interview with HLTV,

“[Dennis] decided that he really doesn’t want to do it [the igl role] and I volunteered, I said I could try it out, if the guys liked it we could keep doing it, and if not, someone else could try it.“

This was a shocking move and one that I expected to go the way of Nathan “NBK-” Schmitt in the past where he often picked it up for a brief stint before dropping it off again. However Lekr0 has thus far stuck to the role much to the praise of his teammates.

“I’m very happy that he actually wanted to in-game lead. I think he is still learning and I think he handled this game incredibly. He always tried to think about what to do next, at some point during the game he thought “well, what the hell do we have left, what can we come up with here?” – f0rest about lekr0 picking up the igl role from HLTV

In the past few months, Lekr0’s ability to in-game lead has only grown. As a leader he has used two different styles of play. The first is a heavy default style that relies on his star players to get picks or map information and then do a mid-round call. The other style is to call for a strategic execute or hit onto the site. He confirmed this in an HLTV interview,

“We play a lot of loose-style standards and a lot of the impact comes from the mid-round calls we have, what info we get on the opponents’ side. The information that everyone brings during the game is really important for us to play this loose style. But when the communication isn’t up and we aren’t playing confidently, we usually go towards most of a strategic approach then.”

Since taking up the in-game leading role for NiP, the team has shot up in the rankings. Prior to Lekr0 joining, NiP were stuck as a tier two team with no good runs at international LANs. This was in spite of their ability as an org to constantly try to find and get better players and despite the fact that in terms of raw skill, they had plenty of good players.

However it wasn’t until Lekr0 joined that they truly formed together as a team. While Lekr0’s style of leadership isn’t as calculating or deep as someone like Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander, it works well for the players he has. On top of that, he continues to have star performances as an in-game leader which is an incredible boon for the team when there other players aren’t going off.

Lekr0 is now one of the key franchise players for NiP. He is the leader that they needed to get to the next level and is arguably the best leader that Sweden currently has to offer if you also account for his individual skill. There are two reasons for this. The first is his own long history grinding up through the scene and learning from the others. As he recalls in his HLTV interview,

“I think I had really good in-game leaders so far, I think I learned the most from pronax back in the day, and when I played in the first fnatic team, with olofmeister and dennis, I actually learned a lot from olof, even though he is not an in-game leader. But his communication and what you can do with communication, I learned a lot about that. That is what I’m working on right now. And playing in my previous teams with GOLDEN, flusha, and dennis – I think GOLDEN is the only true in-game leader, the other two could be but they don’t take the role as their primary one, they have so much experience.”

The other reason is because of the trust that the NiP players have given him. The veterans seem to have complete trust in him, whereas in the case of GOLDEN, he never got the same amount of faith from Fnatic. In addition to that, it is likely that Faruk “pita” Pita has had some level of influence on him as the coach of NiP and a veteran himself. Recall the original quote that GeT_RiGhT said about Lekr0 from the Drop the BombTV Documentary, “…I think if they give him enough time he’s gonna be a top player.”

During the Fnatic-GODSENT shuffles of 2016, Lekr0 was a pawn who shuffled from one team and back again whenever one of the other top players wanted to switch. He wasn’t truly supported or expected to be a star player during that period. However once the shuffles settled down, he had time to build himself in GODSENT. Then when he came to Fnatic, he proved himself on a global scale. Now he has joined NiP and with the support of the star players and the team, has become the leader of one of the biggest franchises in CS:GO. This is the story of Lekr0 thus far. He astounded us with his debut at DreamHack Malmo. He then became a pawn in the Fnatic shuffles of 2016. Now he has risen as the leader of NiP. As time moves onward, it is clear that the next generation of Swedish players will be rising to the top and Lekr0 will be one of the stars that will represent that generation of players.

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