It's crazy to think that in 2015 as he worked the analyst desk for ESL One Cologne, cadiaN's career as a player looked just about over. No longer required in a Danish scene that had far exceeded his abilities at the time, analyst gigs were probably the closest he would get to playing in a reasonable event.
Fast forward eight years, and cadiaN has fought his way back to the top. AWP IGL for the best team in Denmark, his rise to greatness is a story of hard work, determination, and perseverance.
"I never expected him to be as good as he is now. I remember playing with him in the early stages of CS:GO when we grew up in the same era of Counter-Strike, and honestly, he was quite bad back then," Pimp said about cadiaN.
When Denmark had no room for cadiaN, the AWPer had to look elsewhere for a home. Eventually finding that home with Rogue for his second stint with the organisation, he wouldn't just be playing outside of Denmark, but he would also be moving regions entirely as he made the switch to North America.
Considering the current landscape of NA CS, it's easy to forget how competitive NA used to be. Teams like Misfits, OpTic, Splyce, and CLG were all still present, while Cloud9 and Liquid were as strong as they'd ever been.
With a team consisting of vice, wrath, shinobi, and Hiko, cadiaN would have his work cut out for him.
Still, as would become the key descriptor of his career, cadiaN would keep pushing. sicK would come in, and so too would gMd before he was later replaced by Rickeh. Despite the competitiveness of the region, Rogue would advance up the NA rankings, and with a second-place finish at Dreamhack Open Austin 2018, they enjoyed their best finish at a LAN event as a team.
The most impressive result, however, is that cadiaN and Rogue would go on to qualify for the FACEIT London Major, something that was still considered an overachievement at the time.
As it happened, the FACEIT London Major would be cadiaN's final event with Rogue, as North would soon come calling for his services.
Replacing MSL not long after his MVP performance at Dreamhack Stockholm, despite disappointing results outside of those events, cadiaN would unavoidably have huge boots to fill given everything the departing veteran had done for the organisation.
Sadly, this move wouldn't bear the fruits that both cadiaN, or North, hoped it would.
MSL was clearly not an AWPer, despite his MVP performance with the weapons just months prior, and a large sample size had proven that, but cadiaN's performances with the weapon on North hardly suggested that he had been using the gun for a long time either.
Not just that, but results under cadiaN didn't improve either, instead remaining at the same disappointing level that the organisation couldn't afford while facing the embarrassment of their national rivals becoming the greatest team of all time.
Just seven months later, having failed to qualify for the IEM Katowice Major 2019, cadiaN would lose his place on North, and questions would be asked as to whether he had failed his one chance to be a top European professional.
But that wasn't to be the case.
After five months without a team, cadiaN would find a new home with Heroic. Playing just as an AWPer at first, it wouldn't be long before he became an IGL again as the team decided they needed a new voice instead of Snappi's.
The team would start life together strong, picking up a number of impressive placings at tier-one events as well as wins at a couple of tier-two events, but it was as Counter-Strike was forced online by COVID that the real results started to come in.
Winners of Dreamhack Open Fall, ESL One Cologne, and ESL Pro League Season 13, Heroic rose to the top during the online era, and although this was something that would later be used against them, it was a success that can never be taken from them.
Of course, as IGL, cadiaN was central to all of this, and he was beginning to build up a name for himself and his ability to make huge plays, none quite as iconic as his 1v5 to win Pro League.
While the return to LAN would see cadiaN and Heroic struggle to turn deep tournament runs into trophy wins as they had in the online era, the deep runs alone were enough to establish cadiaN as one of the best IGLs in the world, and, outside of that, his individual performances on the AWP improved massively.
A player capable of coming in clutch for his team when they most need it, there are very few players people believe in 1-v-X situations like they do cadiaN. He may still not be the superstar AWPer that other teams at the top possess, but that only serves as a testament to his ability as a leader and the strength of the squad he has assembled.
With cadiaN and Heroic having now won both BLAST Premier Fall Final 2022 and Spring Final 2023, tier one LAN trophies have come their way, and considering that there's also a host of runners-up placings, most notably at the IEM Rio Major, they are a constant threat to win more.
A man who never gave up, and who always believed in himself, cadiaN has one of the most inspirational stories in all of Counter-Strike history.
And with CS2 just around the corner, and the first Major of that game set to be played in Denmark, it feels like cadiaN is just about to start writing the best chapter of his career yet.
"All of a sudden, he turned it around. he kept working, he kept grinding, outworked me, outworked everyone else, and now he finds himself in a position where you can argue he's one of the best IGLs in the world if not the best.
I think his story is mega inspiring, the fact he never gave up, the fact he outworked everyone, the fact he never had the talent to just burst through the scene and had to do it by hard work, I find that mega inspiring and I appreciate it way more than someone with a lot of talent who just comes in and doesn't do it the hard way. For me, cadiaN serves as a great inspiration and also a guy you can look up to if you're a Danish talent, you don't have to break through straight away, if you outwork everyone over time, you'll be fine," Pimp says.
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