With the IEM Cologne 2026 Major Stage 3 just around the corner, the storylines are stacking up fast. Vitality’s dominance, NiKo’s pursuit of the one title that has escaped him, a changing of the guard as veterans like KRIMZ step away, and rebuilding projects like FaZe trying to find their footing. We sat down with Anders to get his take on all of it, from who has the best shot at dethroning the best team in the world, to what the next generation of Counter-Strike is starting to look like.
There are obviously a lot of narratives going into the Major. Which narrative will you be following most closely?
I think the grand narrative that everyone likes to talk about is this idea of who is gonna be beating Vitality. One of the big problems with beating Vitality is that they have such a strong map pool against almost everybody else because they don’t play Ancient. A lot of the other top teams enjoy playing Ancient, so there’s a natural advantage in just having that kind of be the setup for it.
It comes down to what are the other maps that you could try to beat Vitality on. For most of them, that could be Mirage, Inferno, or maybe Overpass if you feel like you’ve got some crazy advantage there. That’s gotta be the grand storyline here. Is there even anyone that’s gonna be strong enough? Who’s gonna have the firepower? Who’s gonna have the stuff to do it? I think that’s probably the most exciting part of this Major in some sense.
If Vitality win the Major, does it become a dynasty conversation? Do you think they become the greatest team of all time?
I think they already are. But yes, 100 percent. If they win the Major here, then it closes. Then we don’t have to ask people any longer if they are the greatest team of all time. We can just say, “Yeah, of course they are.” What they’re doing right now is amazing, and I have no idea why people say it’s boring. I’m not on board with that. I don’t think it’s boring. I think it’s sick to watch them play Counter-Strike to this awesome level. They are really awesome.
How close do you think Falcons are to becoming a team that could take down Vitality?
I’m gonna be super biased here because I have such a stake in NiKo winning a Major. I have followed NiKo’s entire Counter-Strike career. I love watching him play, and I think he obviously has an enormous mental thing that he has to overcome in the big games when we get late in the tournament, maybe especially grand finals. But my faith in NiKo is still there. I still think he can do it. I don’t think I will probably ever give that up. I admit the bias there.
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With the rest of them, especially with kyxsan, with a little bit more time, they seem happier. They seem to be in a better space for most of it. They seem to be laughing a bit more. They have the firepower. They have everything they need to beat a team like Vitality. What they don’t have is the mental victory over themselves. If they can get that, then it’s on.
Talking about FURIA, they were obviously a lot better last year compared to the level they have shown recently. What do you think has gone wrong for them?
I don’t really know. They’re still putting on interesting fights, right? I think they’re taking maps off Spirit and Falcons and stuff like that. In Astana, I believe they did that a couple of times. So it’s not like it’s the end of the world, but obviously there is something that’s kinda missing.
I think molodoy isn’t the shock-and-awe AWP player that we saw last year in Astana, or towards the end of last year as well. So there is something there that’s not really working. I don’t know what it is. I wish I had a better, more precise answer to that question. But I’m not gonna count them out. I feel like FURIA are well aware that things aren’t at a hundred percent. And the storyline obviously with FalleN, this being kinda his retirement year, it couldn’t be a better storyline if this is when they turn it around. I’m not gonna even pretend to be surprised if that happens. I have a lot of respect for FalleN and his time in the game, so if anyone could, it would be him.
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Speaking of retirement year, we had the news today that KRIMZ would be parting ways with fnatic after ten years. We are seeing a lot of players kind of passing on the torch. How does it make you feel, given that you have watched them and worked with them very closely for almost a decade?
It always feels kinda weird, but there’s always gonna be a time when you have to say, “Okay, this is not what I’m looking for anymore.” KRIMZ has got to be one of the most consistently great players. If you took an average of his performance and divided it by however long he’s been playing, it’s just amazing. He’s so consistently good. Never one that’s gonna be in a million frags or highlights, because a lot of the work that he does is not gonna be contributing in that sense. But he’s getting the kills.
I think we always used to say, sometimes you just see KRIMZ with 30 kills on the scoreboard, and you don’t really know how that even happened. But he’s just getting there. I have so much respect for him. His contribution to the game, and maybe especially to fnatic as an organization and Swedish Counter-Strike as a whole, is awesome. It’s always a mixed feeling because you always want the story of one more go, one more go. But for KRIMZ, I feel like this is not a bad time to say, “You know what? I’ve done enough. I’ve done so much.”
We are entering a stage where a new generation is coming up. The average age of players is much younger compared to maybe five or seven years ago. Do you think CS is shifting into a younger era?
It would make sense if we could get there. There’s probably a huge benefit to training people earlier, to getting them used to what it means to play high-level Counter-Strike, to the travel, to the stages. The earlier you can get that experience, the better.
And I think we’ve got young players now that are legitimate inspirations. Someone like donk, right? You see donk being able to become perhaps the best player in the game at the moment. I think that’s a great inspiration for a younger generation. So yeah, I think it’s gonna be happening more. Hopefully that will encourage more people, more academy teams, more all these things. I still think it’s an underappreciated part of the circuit. I wish we had more of that stuff.
Coming to FaZe, they are in a very interesting situation right now. They have an AWPer who has been underperforming, an IGL who does not have that much experience, frozen’s future with FaZe is uncertain, and jcobbb has had a lot of questions raised. If you were the GM of FaZe, how would you rebuild them?
If I ever end up GM-ing any team, the number one thing that I’m always gonna care about is what are our expectations and when do we wanna meet those expectations. For me, the important thing is: are FaZe trying to build a roster that’s gonna win the Major at the end of the year? Is that the goal? Then we need to make really quick progress in a bunch of different ways. On the leadership front, we need to work on the map pool, we need to work on broky’s consistency. There are just a lot of things to solve in a pretty short amount of time. It’s not impossible, but it’s a very, very hard job.
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But if we say instead, “We wanna be a 2027 competitive team, and this year is about finding the right constellation between coaches and fifth players, and we’re gonna be reworking everything, and maybe even rebuilding the identity of the team around Twistzz and everything else,” then if that’s the case, if he’s gonna keep being the leader, the level of expectation for when we are doing these things has to be the same for all players on the team, or this is not gonna work at all.
They still have some insane players there. They could build something behind this. It’s just that the downfall of FaZe, with karrigan leaving and everything, left such a weird taste in everyone’s mouth. But they still have some great players.
With the amount of criticism these players have faced, do you think broky or jcobbb deserve a spot in the team?
I always find it tricky. For broky, I’m almost more critical. I feel like most of the community disagree with me on this. But for jcobbb, I feel like he was thrown into this team in such a bizarre way. For one, he’s replacing rain, which means everyone’s kinda gonna hate you right off the bat because everybody loves rain. People are gonna be like, “Oh my God, why? This is not good enough.”
Then he joined the team, and rain actually was back playing a tournament randomly because I think jcobbb couldn’t make it or something. Then jcobbb is back. Right at the start of him joining this team, there was so much weird, crazy back and forth.
jcobbb never had that experience of playing with the real FaZe, where you had epic comebacks and the whole team was flowing and karrigan was laughing and everyone was like that FaZe feeling that everybody loves. jcobbb never had that. For him, you just don’t even know what the good side looks like. You’ve only seen the negative side where everyone is struggling, broky is not contributing, the whole thing is crashing out, and everyone is kind of like that.
So I have a lot more sympathy for jcobbb in that sense. But whether or not that means he deserves a spot in the team, those things don’t really correlate. If I’m the manager of that team, I’m thinking, “Do I think he can come back and reach high levels? Yes or no?” And that’s the only thing that matters. I think the “deserve” question doesn’t apply that well to professional teams.
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