Why the Cologne Major could be the biggest event of blameF’s career
blameF is an odd player.
For years, hehas had some of the highest output in tier one, despite often serving as an IGL (his lowest-rated year was 2024, with fnatic and Astralis, and he was still rated 1.16).
Yet, even with that in mind, he has never found himself on a truly top team.
COVID certainly played a part in that, but now that he’s reinvented himself once more as the swashbuckling IGL of a reinvigorated BIG Clan, the greatest test of his career awaits him at the IEM Cologne Major, and the rewards for success there could be even greater still.
Thriving in tier-two
When blameF was benched by Astralis to give stavn chance to shine, fnatic wasn’t a destination that many would have predicted.
A team that had been undergoing a near-constant rebuild since 2020, they were probably lower down on the chain than blameF’s Astralis performances justified.
But, blameF, who is probably incorrectly stereotyped by the sheer CS community due to his sheer size, showed no ego and even changed his playstyle in order to shake off the “baitF” moniker he had been tarnished with earlier in his career.
He played closer to the pack after moving to fnatic, improving both his own trading numbers versus his time on Astralis, as well as his deaths traded and saw an increase in the amount of T side opening duels he was taking.
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Unfortunately for blameF, though, despite individual improvements that would see his rating rise from 1.08 in his final five months with Astralis, to 1.18 for the remainder of 2024 and 1.22 in 2025, fnatic’s roster instability prevented him from ever really reaching his peak on the team, even if they did have small victories like qualification to both the Perfect World Shanghai Major and the StarLadder Budapest Major, as well as wins at smaller LANs like FRAG Blocktober and DraculaN Season 1.
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He even shunned the IGL role at this time, preferring to allow bodyy and then fear to do so, further reducing the notion that ego or some kind of necessity to call for himself was the only thing that had ever made him reach the HLTV top 20 lists.
And then BIG came calling.
Returning to captaincy
In another surprising turn of events, blameF moved to BIG at the beginning of the year, joining the German organisation alongside faveN.
A move that was met with mild confusion and partial excitement at the time, it would see blameF take up the mantle of IGL once more, while also adding serious experience and rifle firepower to the team.
The difference for BIG was night and day. The team had ended 2025 with gr1ks as their only real star, but under blameF’s leadership, JDC’s rating shot up from 1.11 in 2025 to 1.15 so far in 2026, and blameF himself saw an increase to 1.22.
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Thanks to the support of tabseN (who throws 0.81 flashes a round on T sides), JDC and blameF formed an entry pack that has terrorised tier two so far this year.
JDC now takes 27.3% of BIG’s T-side opening duels, and when unsuccessful in his attempts, he is traded just under 30% of the time.
That, combined with the team’s overall impressive ratings across their CT sides, has allowed BIG to climb from 49th in VRS at the start of the year to 23rd now, with wins at four smaller LANs and runners-up finishes at three more on top of that.
A run that would see them climb into the qualification spots for the IEM Cologne Major, it’s there that blameF will face the most important event of his career.
Earning his place in tier one
Although BIG have arguably been the kings of tier two thus far in 2026, their tier-one appearances have been nonexistent. In fact, the best-attended event they have attended was the CCT Global Finals, which Liquidpedia lists as a B-tier event, at which the highest-ranked team in attendance was HEROIC.
In Cologne, BIG will take the instant jump to the S-tier. Of course, many of the teams in Stage 1 (where BIG enter the competition) will be at a similar level to those they have been facing all year, but with a bigger stage and the hopes of a nation on their backs, they will be expected to go further and compete against the better teams deeper in the event.
It’s in those games where blameF will have the biggest chance to shine. In those games, blameF’s system, as well as his individual ability, will be tested to the maximum, with teams like Spirit, G2, FUT, and Astralis all having the potential to take a crack at it.
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Should blameF’s system survive those games - or better still, thrive in them - that will be a fantastic advertisement for what the Dane still has to offer to tier one.
And in a tier-one eco-system that currently faces something of an IGL deficit, a player with the individual output of blameF who can also call a solid game of CS could be worth its weight in gold.
Take MOUZ, for instance: their promotion of xertioN to IGL wasn’t only logical because he was already calling CT sides, but it was also a firepower-based decision.
The former NXT man can put up his star-level numbers from typical star spots, while also allowing for other positions on the team to be filled by higher fragging players, rather than having one spot suffer under the weight of a more traditional IGL.
There are plenty of other teams that could benefit from something like this, with caster YouM3 even suggesting on a BLAST Rivals Fort Worth co-stream that teams as high as NAVI could be benefactors of a player like blameF.
It’s for that reason, then, with Cologne set to be the final event before what is expected to be a massive rostermania as teams continue to try to catch Vitality, that a strong performance from blameF at the Major could see the Dane catapulted to the top of many teams’ shopping lists.
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