FaZe is one of the ultimate example of an all-star team. The lineup of: Finn “karrigan” Andersen, Havard “rain” Nygaard, Nikola “NiKo” Kovac, Ladislav “GuardiaN” Kovacs, and Olof “olofmeister” Kajbjer is man-for-man arguably the most stacked line-up in all of CS:GO history. They have numerous accomplishments to their name with tournament victories and top placings. 3 titles victories at ECS Season 4, ESL New York, and ELeague Premier 2017. Five other second place finishes across 2017-2018. In terms of accomplishment, this is already one of the better lineups in history, however those incredible heights were met with not with unreserved praise, but criticism. This was a team that was supposed to break every record, every goal, every tournament. That was the level that the team was operation at. In the last four months since olofmeister has come back, the team has either been eliminated in groups or in the first round of playoffs for their last four tournaments. This period has been the worst in terms of results for the team and has been the catalyst that has made NiKo decide to take on the in-game leadership role from Karrigan. This is the beginning of the end of the FaZe clan. As we head into the dying months of 2018, it has become that FaZe is a team that has nowhere left to go.

To understand why, we first have to understand the ethos of how the FaZe roster was assembled to begin with. When FaZe clan entered the CS:GO scene, it was a haven for a bunch of star player that no didn’t have top domestic teams to join. They had players like Philip “aizy” Aistrup, Joakim “jkaem” Mybostad, Mikail “Maikelele” Bill, and Fabien “kioShiMa” Fiey. These were all skilled players who had the skill to join top domestic lineups, but each had their own reasons to join FaZe. This was a mish mash of characters and cultures, one that was less than the sum of their parts.

However that all changed after Astralis had benched Karrigan at the end of 2016. This was the free agent that FaZe had been looking for as they needed an in-game leader that could bring all of the pieces together. From the moment Karrigan joined, things got better for the squad. What once looked like disparate parts quickly became a greater whole.

That was the starting point of the FaZe clan as we know them in modern CS:GO. Each iteration of the roster has changed as they have subsequently upgraded each of the parts until we get to the roster that we know today, but the idea remains the same. To get as many skilled international players on one squad and use that to conquer the world.

The ultimate version of that is the current lineup with karrigan, rain, NiKo, GuardiaN, and olofmeister. At the end of 2017, this looked like a team that could break CS:GO in a way that was never seen before. They had an incredibly dominant run at ESL New York 2017 and followed it up with ELeague Premier 2017. What started as a legendary beginning soon became an eternal disappointment. FaZe continually put themselves in a position to become the best in the world, but were never able to close out the deal.

SK at the end of 2017 stopped them. They were continually upset by underdog teams throughout their various iterations and tournaments. NiP at IEM Oakland, Fnatic at IEM Katowice, BIG at ESL One Cologne, and most notably Cloud9 at the ELeague Boston Major. We are now in the 9th month of this lineups history (as I’m excluding the standin issues from April 2018 to July 2018 when olofmeister was out).

The beginning of the end came at FACEIT Major London. Down 0-2, the team decided to take away the leader role from Karrigan and have NiKo call the rest of the event. They were supposed to revert back after the event, but the same thing happened against at ESL One New York 2018.

This singular move is the death knells of the FaZe experiment. The move itself isn’t of having NiKo become the in-game leader over Karrigan isn’t the cause, but rather the symptoms of the problem. The problem is this, there is nowhere left to go for the FaZe clan.

The current FaZe roster is the ultimate vision of how FaZe’s ethos. They have recruited the best players in the world, they have the single leader that could have binded them together and create a coherent unit out of all of that firepower. They have failed to achieve their aim of becoming the world’s best team and now they have no answers left.

Let us break apart the entire roster, piece by piece to explain why there are no answers left. The first piece is Rain, the longest standing member of the team. He is an incredibly versatile player who takes on some of the harder roles in the team that allows the star players to shine. NiKo is a prodigious talent that is arguably the second best player in the world. Olofmeister is a great role player who has consistently done well for his role. GuardiaN is one of the world’s best AWPers. Karrigan is the single most qualified leader the CS:GO scene has for running an international squad using a loose tactical system.

There are no good replacements for any of the players that I’ve named. Or rather, there is no replacement that definitively puts FaZe in a position to contest for best team in the world. While they could do something insane like try to recruit Marcelo “coldzera” David or Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev, the increase in firepower will not get them across the hurdle of what is stopping them from being the best. It is an inherent imbalance of roles or style of play. Perhaps that is why the team is now having NiKo be the in-game leader over Karrigan.

That in and of itself is a problem. NiKo is not a long term solution as an in-game leader. This isn’t a player who has shown a structured tactical mind that can match the likes of Astralis or Liquid. While he can call around the strengths of his own skill, that will always be limited in its scope. However there are no other leaders left that they can try. Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander is already on the world’s best team, but even if he wasn’t, his style of leadership clashes with those of the FaZe players. These are players who like to go to event to event and practice using real games. Gla1ve has shown that he wants to skip events so that he and his team can innovate and come up with new things to advance their tactics and knowledge.

Perhaps Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo could do it, but he has launched MIBR and he is the heart and soul of that team. Not only that, but MIBR have slowly improved in the recent months and FalleN’s form as a player has come back online, so there isn’t even an incentive to leave. Even in a world where he might be willing to go, it’s not guaranteed that he would be the solution that FaZe needs.

As for keeping Karrigan as a support player, this is a waste of everyone’s time. When I look at Karrigan as a leader, I consider him to still be one of the all-time greats. A brilliant leader who can enable and combine disparate parts into a greater whole, who can read the game incredibly well from a loose style, and is the best map-veto I’ve ever seen. He is not a support player. From FaZe’s point of view, if they truly believe NiKo is the answer as the leader, then they should go get a specialist support player, someone like Nathan ‘NBK-’ Schmitt. If they wish to keep Karrigan as an in-game leader, then they will have to do a drastic change of kicking 2-3 of the other players and rebuilding that way. If they believe that NiKo will be a long-term in-game leader, then they need to get a support. Having Karrigan on the roster now is merely a compromise between two visions that do not make sense.

Perhaps that is the crux of the problem. No one on the team is willing to face the bitter reality. The opportunity FaZe had to dominate the world has passed. While this lineup will always have a chance to win any tournament they attend on raw skill, they no longer have the team cohesion or the play style necessary to become the world’s best. They can not go back because they have stopped believing in Karrigan. They can not go forward because they don’t know of any other way to make this lineup work.

FaZe is stuck in no man’s land. There are no solutions going forward and there are no answers by going back. FaZe have to admit to themselves that this core of players does not work with each other and that they must move their separate ways. While the lineup was brilliant while it lasted, all things must eventually come to an end.

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