After almost four years, Fnatic finally return to CSGO’s Major stage at the IEM Rio Major, and this time with some UK talent. The London-based org most recently played the IEM Katowice Major in February 2019 with a full Swedish roster where they were eliminated in the group stage after only one victory over Australian underdogs Grayhound.
Now they’re finally back with a new approach and overhauled roster. Owen Pearce takes a look at Fnatic’s chances at Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Rio which kicks off today and runs into November.
Not only does this Major mark a significant achievement for the UK scene, but it also gives the Brit-driven strategic core (consisting of coach Jamie ‘keita’ Hall, and in-game leader William ‘mezii’ Merriman) a chance to prove themselves at the top level.
Looking at the individuals of the roster, first we have Fnatic’s tenured player, Freddy ‘KRIMZ’ Johansson, a man who has proven himself time and time again to be capable of performing when it matters the most.
KRIMZ is a player who thrives under pressure, currently having the third most recorded clutches at Major events (behind only Astralis’ Andreas ‘Xyp9x’ Højsleth, and Nicolai ‘device’ Reedtz who are both absent from the event having failed to qualify, making KRIMZ arguably the number one clutcher at the entire Major). So so keep an eye out for Freddy and his decade of experience in those 1vX moments.
KRIMZ looks to be in fantastic form going into the major coming off of five consecutive positive kill-death events, and despite having already won two Majors at Fnatic in his long and storied career, he shows no signs of slowing down yet.
Moving on to the first half of Fnatic’s Danish duo, and the team’s resident (and unverified) AWPer, Nico ‘nicoodoz’ Tamjidi. Despite looking somewhat shaky since having joined the new roster, Nico notably glowed in the Road to Rio RMR (which former Fnatic player smooya qualified for), dropping a red-hot 1.28 rating making him the highest performer on the team, perhaps due to his Major-winning Danish DNA.
Of course we hope that the next week is full of good days, but despite his inconsistent nature, nobody can deny that when he’s on, he’s on.
Next up of course is the second part of the Danish duo and Fnatic’s Freddy 2.0, Fredrik ‘roeJ’ Jørgensen.
Although roeJ’s tier one breakthrough was relatively recent, it would be amiss to imply that roeJ is an inexperienced player, he is in fact the oldest player on the roster being just a few months older than the original Freddy, and has been playing at a professional level for around half a decade.
Moving like a man half his age, roeJ has averaged an impressive 1.16 rating since donning the Fnatic jersey, making him overall the highest rated player on the team. Bringing with him a much needed element of aggression, roeJ is most in his element with his finger glued to that W key, opening up bombsites on the T side, and making round-winning information plays on the CT side.
Next up is Fnatic’s ‘x-factor’, a Dutch player by the name of Dion ‘FASHR’ Derksen. Despite only having made his tier one debut this year with Fnatic, FASHR has played the part of the hidden gem for quite some time.
In fact, this is not the first time he has hitched himself to a British project. Way back in late 2017, FASHR could be seen lighting up the scoreboards on a majority UK Endpoint roster, with whom he won an ESL UK CSGO Premiership. Though to many of us he still a bit of a question mark, we like what we’ve seen so far and hope to see more in the future.
Last but certainly not least is the UK’s own William ‘mezii’ Merriman. First entering the wider public eye on HenryG’s Cloud9 colossus project, mezii has so far done nothing but impress. Much like FASHR, mezii stepped up from the tier two fairly late compared to many, however, despite the numerous questions raised regarding his competency, mezii came out of the gates swinging and swiftly silenced the non-believers.
Having proved himself individually as a player that belongs in tier one, mezii set his sights on the next mountain. Seeing the IGL gap left after Alex ‘ALEX’ McMeekin’s controversial departure from Fnatic, many wondered what the future looked like for the org’s CSGO roster. After all, who could they possibly source to fill the void? Only one man had the answer.
In a release that many (including myself) thought to be at least somewhat questionable, it was announced that mezii would be taking the reins as Fnatic’s in-game leader. Once again, mezii quickly proved himself to be more than capable in the drivers’ seat, and we saw a Fnatic that was able to compete and put up numbers at all levels of competition.
Individual performance was a concern for many after the announcement that mezii would be taking over in-game leading duties, as we know the vast majority of IGLs predictably tend to have weaker individual performances, and historically, players transitioning into the role almost always have a noticeable drop-off in individual performance.
However, astonishingly, mezii has somehow managed to maintain an extremely high level of individual play in spite of his added responsibilities, remaining as the second highest rated player on the roster, leaving some to question if there’s anything this man can’t do.
A promising future ahead
Of course, there have been some teething problems as one would expect for any new roster, especially with an inexperienced caller, but frankly, the future looks bright, and so far all we have seen is solid fundamentals, crisp rotations, and most importantly, consistent progress.
All that remains is to see how this new Fnatic will perform in the future, at this major and beyond, and from where I’m sitting it looks promising.
A roster that many wrote off for a multitude of reasons, including their completely fresh IGL and the current climate of uber-stacked rosters, has consistently performed beyond expectations and has already made a marked improvement from previous rosters, having qualified their org for its 15th major after a turbulent three years, before which it was present at every single CSGO major in the game’s history.
Of course we here at Esports News UK will be cheering the boys on at Rio, but regardless of the result in Brazil, they’ve already done us proud and truthfully we’re glad to see Fnatic finally make another Major appearance. Wer’e excited to see where this roster goes under the leadership of mezii, and the guidance of coach keita.
Related content: ‘I’m not your typical UK CSGO player’ – Fnatic Mezii interview conducted by James Banks
