Welcome to a satirical spin on dream team drafting, where I’ll be using stat analyzations and biased opinions to put together a superteam for various countries and regions.

We’re gonna kick things off with France. Because to me, France is one of the most interesting regions when put into this context since there actually is a French – with a hint of Spanish – superteam: G2. It’s also interesting because, since the shuffle that resulted in the newest iterations of G2 and EnVyUs, neither team has lived up to expectations.

I’m gonna break up each individual role and make my picks at the end, so if you first want to see the team I have chosen, skip to the bottom.

In-Game Leader

Well, we’re a little stuck here. We have five candidates, only two of them are IGLs by trade and one of them isn’t even French.

I’ll start with the inaptly named, Vincent “Happy” Schopenhauer. Once-upon-a-time, all the way back in 2015, Happy was considered the best IGL, he was even named the eighth best player in the world that year by HLTV. Believe it or not, he also won two Majors, Dreamhack Winter 2014 and Dreamhack Open Cluj-Napoca 2015. Sure, the credentials are there, but if you’ve watched pro CS in the past couple of years you know why Happy doesn’t instantly take the IGL spot on this team.

Happy demonstrated incredible leading skills throughout 2014 and 2015, in the latter of which, the team shone and were considered as the best in the world towards the last few months. He even brought firepower to the table and had an HLTV Rating of 1.13 in 2015, not bad for the guy pulling the strings. Then, the aptly named. Timothée “DEVIL” Démolon happened. Now, it’s unfair to say DEVIL ruined EnVyUs, but he did (life’s unfair, deal with it). After DEVIL joined, Happy and his other teammates all fell off, performing even worse than they were when they had Fabien “The Problem” “KioShiMa” Fiey. Happy conceded his IGL role to DEVIL and became the dedicated lurker for a short stint. It’s hard to say for sure that it was the role change that worsened his leading skills but he never was the same after that.

To try and keep this article somewhat condensed, I’ll tackle the next three options in one go, since they all fit the same category: IGLs who aren’t actually IGLs. So for this subcategory, we have, Richard “shox” Papillon, Nathan “NBK” Schmitt and DEVIL. The main reason that none of these players will be our IGL is that – you guessed it – they aren’t IGLs. Now both shox and NBK have done well as IGLs but this isn’t their dedicated role and while both of those players would be excellent picks in general, I don’t think they make excellent picks as IGLs. DEVIL doesn’t make the cut because he struggles to frag against tier-two opponents and his leading capabilities are around the same level, tier-two/three isn’t good enough for a superteam.

This brings us to the winner, Kevin “Ex6TenZ” Droolans. He’s older than the rest, he’s won less and struggled all the way down in tier-two. So why is he the best? His leading style of course! Ex6TenZ is known for his strategical mind and while he would absolutely get destroyed by the world’s best players as an individual, he has the power to bring out the best in his players with well-thought-out strats.

On a more serious note, Ex6TenZ would struggle versus tier-one teams but it’s not like: A) He would go 0/20 every game or, B) IGLs are required to frag hard. Just look at Finn “karrigan” Andersen, he’s not the most reliable fragger but he’s survived and ended up on the world’s best team because he’s a strong leader. Ex6TenZ is also incredibly well respected in the French scene and can mesh well with most players. Just look at how Pujan “FNS” Mehta is fairing on Cloud9 for example, he doesn’t have sick aim and is easily the least skilled in the team, but they’re still winning plenty of games.

AWPer

The obvious choice here is Christophe “SIXER” Xia because SIXER can just dab on his opponents. It’s unfortunate because it would have been nice to include Kenny “KennyS” Schrub as well since that would be the ultimate dabbing duo, but he is a far inferior AWPer and his rifling is appalling compared to God SIXER. Not to mention, SIXER is the wielder of the fabled, “Magic Stick”, a weapon that only the best French AWPer can wield.

Let’s be real though, KennyS is currently the eighth best player on HLTV and has a rating of 1.16, he also took the seventh spot in HLTV’s best players of 2017. He’s an obvious choice and as we’ve seen on Titan, EnVyUs and G2, he can easily hard carry a team when needed. He also has a K/D ratio of 1.25, which is remarkable considering how many games he’s played over his career. He’s also a Major winner. No other player in France really compares to him on the AWP, except for maybe Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut but KennyS has far more experience against the best players in the world and making ZywOo AWP could be too much pressure for him.

Entry Fragger

In my eyes, there are only two players to consider as a dedicated entry and they are Dan “apEX” Madesclaire and Adil “ScreaM” Benrlitom. Seemingly, a problem here is that apEX and KennyS seem to be a package deal, however, after the recent G2 roster change, KennyS did admit he would be willing to leave apEX behind to go and play with shox, so that problem is dealt with. Comparing the players, ScreaM comes out on top, his 1.10 rating trumping apEX’s 1.05 rating. And of course, you can’t debate that ScreaM’s aim isn’t among the absolute best in the game, with an ‘edshot percentage of 68. I put both players against each other using HLTV’s comparison feature and these are the results:

You can see for yourself that ScreaM is superior by stats alone. The only thing here that really puts apEX above ScreaM is his opening kills per round which is just about better than ScreaM’s, but when you factor in that ScreaM is playing on a worse team where he has more pressure to carry the team, it’s a somewhat forgivable figure since he can’t really risk rushing into the enemy just for a single kill. You may think that ScreaM is just doing well because he is playing in tier-two, but he was a key part of G2’s successful run back in 2016. But I could also argue that apEX is a Major winner, is far more experienced at tier-one and has much better chemistry with our AWPer, KennyS.

Although it is tempting to pick the ‘edshot Machine, apEX will be filling the entry role for my superteam (purely based on his facial expressions).

Rifler

This is without a doubt, the juiciest section.

There is a number of candidates here, including ScreaM who just missed out on the entry role. Now I’ll get straight to the point here and admit that shox isn’t making this team. The reason for this being that if I pick shox, I have to pick his best bud, Edouard “SmithZz” Dubourdeaux, and frankly, I don’t think SmithZz is even close to being good enough for a superteam.

It does hurt that I can’t have ole’ shoxie, but the team would fare better without SmithZz – even if he would be co-leading and organizing the defaults. So I think that cutting shox from the mix leaves me with about three real options, Cédric “RpK” Guipouy, ScreaM and ZywOo. Now, some people would throw Oscar “mixwell” Cañellas into the mix, no pun intended, I’m trying (and failing) to keep this team as French as possible and while I’ll allow Belgians, Spaniards are a little too out there.

Rpk was one of my favorite players when I first started watching CS, he just seemed like a solid anchor of a player and rightfully deserved his nickname of “Le Tank”. However, after being swapped to EnVyUs he just seems like a shadow of his former self and isn’t doing so good stats-wise with a rating of 0.99. He also has a lot of experience playing with Ex6TenZ, who, on a side-note, brought Rpk out of retirement to play with him. Sadly though, Ex6TenZ could work with anyone and I’d prefer to bring in a more reliable or flashy player instead.

We’ve discussed ScreaM and his stats and he does seem like the ideal choice over ZywOo because of his history. He’s far more experienced at the highest levels of the game and has played with some of the team before. However, ZywOo is just incomprehensibly good at the game. He has a rating of 1.38 and an identical K/D ratio, I don’t even know how that’s feasible. Yes, he is only 17 but that just means he has plenty of years left to improve and dominate. And yes, he won’t be able to play with the team for another few months, but his raw talent is worth the wait in my eyes. ZywOo is the biggest gamble on the team but when almost every pro player says he’s going to be the next big thing, it’s not all that risky.

He is an AWPer by nature but he has shown that his rifling is far beyond that of many other pros and along with KennyS who demonstrates similar capabilities, we have a deadly hybrid duo who can swap between being the AWPer as and when they feel like it.

Support

The last role to fill out is the support. Some teams opt to have more firepower rather than a dedicated support, such as Faze who, up until recently, employed Olof “olofmeister” Kajbjer as a supportive player, despite the fact that he was previously the star-player on Fnatic. Yet, in France, there is still a multitude of dedicated supports and that’s what I’ll be choosing from. Now as much as I would love to bring in the legend that is Mathieu “Maniac” Quiquerez (and turn this team into 2015 Titan plus ZywOo), he’s dropped off a lot since his days back on Titan and even then the team wasn’t good enough. So, unfortunately, Maniac will have to tough it out on Team LDLC for a little longer.

That leaves me with Alexandre “bodyy” Pianaro, NBK and KioShiMa. Now bodyy is the worst of the bunch, with a poor rating of 0.98 and only 0.14 assists per round. He also only has a 0.99 K/D ratio, which isn’t awful for a support but it’s worse than what the other two players offer. Looking at KioShiMa next, he did spend time on Faze and performed fairly average but he did his job. Kio is also a two-time Major winner, but as we’ve already seen with Happy, previous credentials don’t reflect current ability. He’s much better than bodyy with a rating of 1.02 but still not the best there is.

If you hadn’t guessed already, NBK will be supporting this lineup. While it’s true that he hasn’t always agreed with Ex6TenZ’s leading style, they’ve both changed and matured a lot since the days they spent playing together and they would likely be able to find a compromise between to the two of them. There’s a big factor for NBK being the support and that’s the fact that he’s the most handsome just an all around great guy. As well as the fact he’s played with three of the others before. He’s also statistically the best support in France, with a 1.05 rating and 0.16 assists per round. On top of that, a K/D ratio of 1.07 is pretty solid for a support. NBK is the kind of player that stays quiet until he’s needed and steps up when it’s required of him. Also, his Krieg game is on point so he can double up as the team’s dedicated Krieg-er.

The Final Roster

So, the final roster looks like this:

Kevin “Ex6TenZ” Droolans

Kenny “KennyS” Schrub

Dan “apEX” Madesclaire

Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut

Nathan “NBK” Schmitt

This team is, in my eyes, the best available team without shox. We have a renowned IGL who has earned the respect of every French player and the respect of global pros and fans alike, an AWPer who has always been regarded as one of the best in the game in and out of his dedicated role, an entry whose name everyone knows and who’s one of the best individually skilled French players, a wonderkid who’s grasped the attention of the top-performing pros as the next best thing and last, but not least, the sexiest damn support you could ask for. Now all we need is for Titan to come back.

Vive la France!