Winning a tournament is a good accomplishment for a team. Winning a championship series is a great accomplishment. But what happens to squads that win a tournament and then fail to reproduce their own triumph? Today, the CS.MONEY blog is going to tell you about teams that are pining for wins.
Ninjas in Pyjamas
A Swedish team that was unstoppable at the dawn of the CS:GO era. Even though teams adapted to Ninjas in Pyjamas’ style, they continued to win a couple of tournaments a season. Everything changed in 2016, when they won IEM Oakland, beating SK in the finals.
Through 2016, the Swedes had won 19 major tournaments. In 2016, they took three more tournaments. Notably, it was all achieved by the same lineup: Patrik “f0rest” Lindberg, Christopher “GeT_RiGhT” Alesund, Adam “friberg” Friberg, and Richard “Xizt” Landström. Only the fifth player changed.
This backbone would break up in 2017, but NIP would still manage to win another IEM Oakland. Fredrik “REZ” Sterner would replace Adam on the team, and William “draken” Sundin would be the fifth player at the time. Since that tournament, the Swedish team haven’t won a single major tournament. Even the no-“old”-players policy didn’t help NIP become champions of anything.
Now Nicolai Reedtz has joined the team. The first attempt was quite bearable, even good: the renewed squad made it to the finals at Flashpoint 3. A great result, considering that the last time the club was in the finals dates back to the days of BLAST Pro Series: Copenhagen 2019.
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G2
The organization had many lineups: from Poland, Europe, and France. But let’s focus on the latter, which would eventually become Balkan. The roster has won four tournaments throughout its existence. The last time the team earned a trophy was in 2017. The squad won DreamHack Malmo at the beginning of its second season.
No one from that lineup is part of the roster now. Players have repeatedly replaced each other, and none of them have been able to bring G2 any trophies. The team now has three of the best players from the Balkan peninsula and two good French supporting players.
OG
OG’s European roster was assembled in late 2019 and has experienced two reshuffles since then. Over that time, the team hasn’t won a single trophy. This case is a bit out of the ordinary, yet there are some stellar players on the team who clearly miss winning.
Valdemar “valde” Wangsa won his last major trophy in 2018, Aleksi “Aleksib” Virolainen won the BLAST Pro Series in 2019, and Nikolaj “niko” Kristensen won a tournament in late 2020.
In any event, the OG roster wasn’t formed to make the playoffs but to win big tournaments. Currently, the team has a fighting roster that could allow the organization to finally win the coveted CS:GO trophy.
mousesports
European squad mousesports changed quite recently, with the team’s captain and sniper getting replaced. The squad last won a tournament in early 2020. Since then, the lineup has changed multiple times.
Now mousesports have found their game with Christopher “dexter” Nong. The club has already become champions at Flashpoint Season 3 and Snow Sweet Snow #3. So it’s time for the other teams on this list to step up and catch up with the “mouses.”
By the way, in celebration of mousesports winning the RMR tournament, we assembled a championship inventory. If you’re a mouz fan or just like red stylish skins, you should definitely check out our selection.
