After eleven years, our time with CS:GO is ending. The greatest game to ever be played, many great players have graced its servers, so what would it look like if we could put the greatest of all into one team?
Taking every year into account and weighing them equally for no argument of any era being more competitive than any other, we’re going to build a team of the greatest IGL, AWPer, Entry Fragger, Support, and Lurker the game has to offer.
Using both stats and achievements to factor into our decision-making, here is the CS:GO dream team.
Throughout its history, CS:GO has seen many great leaders guide their squads to greatness. FalleN brought Brazil into the limelight, Zeus led the Russian-speaking scene to its first Major, and pronax became the first IGL to win two consecutive Majors with fnatic; that being said, no IGL has won as many Majors as gla1ve.
The man who took Astralis from Major bottlers to Major champions just three months after joining, he would go on to win three more with the team and the inaugural season of the Intel Grand Slam as Astralis became the greatest team of all time.
Not just that, but gla1ve did so while redefining both Counter-Strike, and what it meant to be a fragging In-game Leader. His tactics, and the utility usage they were built around forced all other teams to adapt to become like them, and his 1.11 HLTV Rating in 2018 is one of the greatest peaks from any IGL we’ve ever seen, including FalleN’s incredible 1.14 rated 2016, a feat he managed to achieve with the added benefit of using an AWP.
There are many names we could’ve gone for as the AWPer in this team; kennyS was so good they had to nerf the AWP, device had consistency like no other, and ZywOo is currently enjoying one of the greatest years of any player ever, but let’s be real here, there’s only one true option, and that’s s1mple.
The Ukrainian is regarded by many as the greatest player of all time, and his abilities on the AWP have even been immortalised in game. With an unpredictable playstyle and rotations so strong he is a constant thorn in his enemies side, s1mple has a longevity at the top that no other player can say they have.
A Major winner, Intel Grand Slam winner, and the number one player in HLTV’s top twenty three times, twice has s1mple recorded an incredible 1.35 HLTV Rating in a year. In the first of those two years, 2018, he recorded the second most clutches with 75, but also managed to have an impact early on in rounds with the most opening kills recorded that year too, capable of being effective both as an aggressive AWPer and a passive one, there is no one else we could’ve chosen to be the AWPer of our dream team.
"The best player to ever do it. Considering it was right in the middle of the Astralis era, with a weaker team, and the strongest HLTV top three ever with s1mple, device and NiKo, s1mple’s 2018 was the strongest and most impressive year of any CS:GO player ever." - launders
The second member of the legendary Astralis team to feature in our dream team, Xyp9x is the player who defined what it means to be a Support player.
Nicknamed ‘The Clutch Minister’, if s1mple’s 75 clutches in 2018 were impressive, it was outmatched by Xyp9x’s 77. A key reason why Astralis were ever able to win as many trophies as they did, no one could put it better than Launders did in our best player article.
"As a support player and closer, Xyp9x in 2018 had a clutch aura that nobody in the game had or thought was possible. Every 1v3 felt 50/50 with Xyp9x alive, and it felt like Astralis won more than a few tournaments based on his individual clutch rounds alone. Truly the scariest clutch player ever." - launders
A role that could have so easily gone to GeT_RiGhT for his incredible run between 2013 and 2014, instead we went for the man rated number one by HLTV in both 2016 and 2017, coldzera.
One of the greatest peaks of any player ever, his 1.24 and 1.25 HLTV Ratings in those two years made him near untouchable. A two-time Major winner and MVP in both of those tournaments, very few players can say they were as instrumental to a team’s success as coldzera can.
Also an incredibly strong secondary AWPer in his peak, coldzera is an incredibly versatile player whose knowledge of timings and precise lurks would make our dream team a terrifying threat for any opposition.
Now regarded as the greatest player to never win a Major and therefore the only player in our dream team to not win a Major, that doesn’t stop niKo from being one of the greatest players of all time.
It’s not possible to say when NiKo’s peak was, since 2017 he’s only ended a year with below a 1.20 HLTV Rating twice, and even in those two years he finished with incredibly strong 1.16 and 1.19 HLTV Ratings.
Arguably the greatest rifler to ever grace Counter-Strike, as launders said, it’s only due to s1mple and device that NiKo hasn’t been regarded as the best player in a year by HLTV. Now a winner of both IEM Katowice and IEM Cologne, he’s won some of the most prestigious tournaments Counter-Strike has to offer, and it feels like he’s done yet.
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