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<\/p>\nThe date is the 26th of November, the map \u2013 Nuke. The teams are Andr\u00e9 \u2018drop\u2019 Abreu\u2019s RED Canids, and Finn \u201ckarrigan\u201d Andersen\u2019s FaZe Clan \u2013 a clash of polar opposites that is meant to be a clean 2-0 win for the juggernaut that had made the finals of three out of the four CS2 Majors so far, but fate had something else in mind. FaZe had already shown signs of weakness against both NRG and NIP in the Best-of-1 matches, and following a series of underwhelming results at both CS Asia Championship 2025 & IEM Chengdu 2025, they looked mortal.<\/p>\n
With Jakub \u201cjcobbb\u201d Pietruszewski still struggling to find his place on the team and Helvijs \u201cbroky\u201d Saukants going through one of the worst moments of his career, FaZe were playing far from ideal Counter-Strike, finding themselves 11-12 down on Nuke, having already lost their own map pick of Mirage in a 7-13 fashion.<\/p>\n
5.4.3.2.1..0.4 \u2013 boom. 0.4 seconds away. One unused smoke. One bad position for a defuse in a 1v1 situation. This is how close, yet how far RED Canids\u2019 AWP-er Allan \u201chistory\u201d Lawrenz was from defusing the bomb against karrigan and sending FaZe home, eliminating them from Stage 1 of the StarLadder Budapest Major, or shall I say \u2013 this is how close he was to saving FaZe Clan.<\/p>\n
All of us remember what happened after that. The ultimate \u201cFaZe Bullshit\u201d. Back-to-back wins over RED Canids and Fluxo to make it out of Stage 1, a flawless 3-0 through Stage 2, and wins over Vitality, 3DMAX, Passion UA, MOUZ & NAVI to make it all the way to the Grand Final, where the magic would finally run out in the Best-of-5 clash against The Greatest Team in modern CS history \u2013 Team Vitality.<\/p>\n
Regardless of their problematic 2025, FaZe were able to, in true FaZe fashion, make another Major Grand Final, making everyone believe once again, but was that truly a miracle, or a curse in disguise?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After the miraculous run in Budapest, FaZe went into 2026 with the mission of proving that this new iteration with jcobbb as the new entry\/anchor, and Twistzz as the main star on CT-sides would be worth sticking to, but they couldn\u2019t. The year started with a 1-2 online loss to JW and the EYEBALLERS theBLAST Bounty 2026 Season 1, but it was difficult to put too much stock into the first game after a break, especially considering the online setting \u2013 however, what followed wasn\u2019t pretty either. With over two weeks to prepare for IEM Krakow 2026, FaZe were barely able to best s1mple\u2019s BC.Game with a 2-1 score, but were completely dominated by both 3DMAX and MOUZ, exiting in 9-12th.<\/p>\n
Next was PGL Cluj-Napoca 2026. A 2-0 win over an AWP-less Heroic, followed by 1-2 losses to Falcons and PARIVISION, and a 0-2 to Astralis. Then it was EPL S23, where FaZe beat Monte, but lost to G2 Esports, paiN, and Astralis \u2013 bombing out 12-14th.<\/p>\n
Blast Open Rotterdam was FaZe\u2019s opportunity to strengthen up their IEM Cologne Major position. Getting a couple of wins would put them in a spot where, regardless of not being guaranteed a spot in Stage 3, they would\u2019ve been able to get another opportunity of creating something out of nothing at a Major. Sadly, after 1-2 losses to Aurora & Tyloo, FaZe found themselves outside of the Major invites zone, forced to attend some smaller VRS LAN tournaments in pursuit of a miracle. And that wasn\u2019t pretty either.<\/p>\n
At DraculaN Season 6, FaZe went in with a single goal \u2013 winning the event, and easing the stress towards the end of the season, but outside of a 2:0 win over Romanian side aimclub, karrigan & co. conceded back-to-back losses to Passion UA, and fnatic, dropping even lower in the VRS standings \u2013 30th to be exact.<\/p>\n
Just like that, FaZe was forced to attend the HLC Belgrade PRO 2026 LAN event, as well as PGL Bucharest 2026, simultaneously. That\u2019s right, traveling between Belgrade and Bucharest \u2013 FaZe\u2019s last ditch effort of making the Major requires them to win the LAN event in Serbia, as well as to win all of their games in PGL until the cut-off, and even that wouldn\u2019t guarantee reaching the goal, as FaZe are still outside of the invite zone.<\/p>\n Out of their 19 Bo3\u2019s in 2026, FaZe have lost 13, beating only BC.Game, Heroic, Monte, aimclub, Bee, and Drama. And that\u2019s not all, since the start of the year FaZe has:<\/p>\n All of this, while still having frozen (16th highest rated player vs. Top 30 in 2026, 12th on CT-sides) playing some of the best CS possible for a player in a similar position. Even with the occasional pop-off games from Twistzz, FaZe is looking dry. The individual struggles of both broky and jcobbb keep haunting them, communication & cohesion seem to be far from ideal, and FaZe\u2019s tactical approach to games does not seem to be evolving, leading to the removal of 3-year-long coach \u2013 Filip \u201cNEO\u201d Kubski, and the temporary promotion of the team\u2019s analyst \u2013 GruBy, to the position of an interim-coach.<\/p>\n Considering its firepower, experience, and pieces \u2013 FaZe seems to be way off from where it should be. Playing outdated Counter-Strike, struggling to establish any real level of consistency, and showing what an elite team could look like, if playing one-dimensional Counter-Strike.<\/p>\n However, this is not anything new. Signs were visible way before 2026, way before the Budapest Major, and during FaZe\u2019s performance in Stage 1, prior to the RED Canids game.<\/p>\n And so, we go back to the 0.4 seconds. That defuse that could\u2019ve had FaZe eliminated in Stage 1, putting them in a position where changes would\u2019ve been inevitable, and maybe, just maybe \u2013 those changes could\u2019ve led to a better time. A time where FaZe doesn\u2019t miss out on a Counter-Strike Major for the first time since entering the game back in 2016 when fox, Maikelele, aizy, rain & jkaem went into the MLG Columbus 2016 with the FaZe jerseys on their backs.<\/p>\n 16 Majors, 10x Playoff appearances, and 5 consecutive playoff appearances with 3x silver medals out of the last 4 Major tournaments. FaZe Clan\u2019s Major Bullshit might finally be coming to an end, but regardless of the logo carrying real magic, and this team being the only one that could probably still turn the tides in their favor and make it to Cologne, one thing is for sure \u2013 one more miracle should not mean another couple of months of \u201copportunities\u201d, \u201cchances\u201d, and \u201ctime\u201d for a team that is far from the level of the real identity of FaZe Clan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The date is the 26th of November, the map \u2013 Nuke. The teams are Andr\u00e9 \u2018drop\u2019 Abreu\u2019s RED Canids, and Finn \u201ckarrigan\u201d Andersen\u2019s FaZe Clan \u2013 a clash of polar opposites that is meant to be a clean 2-0 win for the juggernaut that had made the finals of three out of the four CS2 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":380608,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-380495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/community.skin.club\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/HE_ejDNbkAAH9Mo.png\")
Tactical Incompetency:<\/h3>\n
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