Boston 2018. Stockholm 2021. Copenhagen 2024. Shanghai 2024.
The four most heartbreaking defeats of Nikola “NiKo” Kovač’s career at Counter-Strike Majors. Every time, you’d think it was finally the tournament for him to win his crown. The one thing lacking in his trophy cabinet. Yet, Major after Major, NiKo’s greatest dream eludes him.
Ever since the true start to his superstar professional career with Mousesports in 2015, NiKo has always been recognized as one of the best players in the whole world — especially when rifling prowess is considered. Eight consecutive appearances on HLTV’s year-end Top 20 rankings since 2016, eight MVP awards at international tournaments, and 16 total LAN titles won in his career. NiKo’s definitely lived it all and seen it all, but to this day he still can’t say that he’s won it all. Of everything he has already accomplished in his professional career, winning a CS Major seems to be the most impossible of dreams for him.
It’s easy to call it a curse nowadays after the numerous attempts each year to finally break the streak, but not too long ago it was all just about NiKo chasing his ultimate dream for the first time. His first true shot at glory came in 2018 at the ELEAGUE Major Boston. Competing alongside Håvard “rain” Nygaard, Finn “karrigan” Andersen, Ladislav “GuardiaN” Kovács, and Olof “olofmeister” Kajbjer Gustafsson, he was part of the FaZe superteam lineup that was considered the heavy favorites to win the first Major championship of 2018. NiKo and company went through the tournament with ease and dropped only one map on their way to the Grand Final against Cloud9. C9 were heavy underdogs going into the title-deciding series, but everyone knows how that played out. FaZe had four championship points on Map 3 but ultimately choked a 15-11 lead in the CS:GO Boston Major Final on the final map, Inferno, giving C9 and NA their first Major in history.
NiKo was the best player at Boston
But they still couldn’t close it
It was painful, for sure, especially as NiKo was FaZe’s highest-rated player throughout the entire tournament and the team’s best player on Inferno. But at that point NiKo was only 21 years old and two years into his career at CS:GO Majors, meaning there was still lots of time to secure the game’s most coveted prize. Though the rest of his stint with FaZe would not result in a trip back to any Major Grand Final, he still bagged a number of LAN titles throughout 2018-2019 as one of the most consistent performers on the lineup. NiKo’s time on FaZe came to an end during the pandemic after a career-defining move to G2 in October 2020, where the Major “curse” would really establish itself as a recurring theme.
With the COVID-19 pandemic still a global issue, the 2021 season was mostly played online. Under the NiKo era, G2 found its peak in the middle of the year, with a victory at the BLAST Premier Spring Showdown and podium finishes in its next five S-tier tournaments. Despite the success and consistency as playoff performers, the team could never quite get their hands on the top prize and were stopped twice at the final hurdle by Natus Vincere who were considered to be the best team in the world that year. The first CS:GO Major since the global pandemic took place in Stockholm where, for the first time with his new team, NiKo would once again step on the Grand Final stage after a superb campaign as G2’s best player statistically. He was viewed as the leader of that team despite not being its IGL, and the final challenge for NiKo was to beat the most in-form team in professional CS and Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev, the greatest player of all time.
The stakes were high for both NAVI and G2 as the final series drew closer. The storyline was the same for both squads; a prime opportunity to deliver the first-ever Major championship for their respective organizations and their superstar players. NiKo vs. s1mple. Two uncrowned kings looking for a seat on the throne. Would this finally be the chance for G2’s ace to secure the victory he’d been hunting for all his life?
No, it wasn’t. Even though NiKo finished the PGL Major Stockholm as the second highest-rated player only behind s1mple with an endless amount of highlights to his name, the only thing that stuck with fans was his infamous Deagle whiff. G2 were ahead 15-12 on the second map, Nuke, with a 2vs2 post-plant scenario in their favor. NiKo had s1mple lined up for an almost guaranteed one-tap from Heaven, however, the shot missed by mere pixels and resulted in NAVI securing the round two seconds later. Though it didn’t necessarily lose the game for G2 nor would a kill automatically send the series to a third map, it was all about mental and momentum from that point on. NAVI took the match to a 15-15 stalemate and ultimately won the Stockholm Major after double overtime, making them the first-ever team to do so without losing a single map.
It was yet another heartbreaking end to a Major Grand Final for NiKo after his remarkable run of form to carry G2 was permanently spoiled by one missed shot. Just like in Boston three years prior, his team once again fell short despite being one round away from finishing the map. If the dream didn’t seem so impossible back then, it became more apparent after the Stockholm Major that NiKo seemed to be cursed never to win it all.
2022 was a rough year for NiKo and G2. They only reached the Legends Stage of the PGL Major Antwerp and completely bombed out of the European Regional Major Ranking tournament, failing to qualify for IEM Rio altogether. With LAN events making a comeback two years after the scene was forced to compete predominantly online, another curse followed the team — their inability to win an international offline trophy. At the same time, NiKo’s last victory came in 2019 at BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen, G2 as an organization suffered a five-year drought since lifting the DreamHack Masters Malmö 2017 trophy. By December, it seemed like the team’s woes would continue on for another full year with just one final tournament to play. But, at that year’s BLAST Premier World Final, the unthinkable happened.
G2 won on LAN.
Was G2’s win a fluke?
Nope
Their triumph looked like a fluke especially given the team’s history of falling short, but it wasn’t. G2 put the world on notice two months later after they won IEM Katowice 2023 with a 3-1 Grand Final series against Heroic, who were the second-best team in the world at the time. This only made the spotlight on them even brighter as the final Major in Global Offensive history was fast approaching. G2 got past the RMRs easily with a 3-1 record and were considered strong contenders to make a deep playoff run or even win the whole thing once and for all. But, when the BLAST.tv Paris Major rolled around, G2 fell short once again and exited the final CS:GO Major with a disappointing 1-3 standing in the Legends Stage. Sure, there was only one Major held in 2023, but it was another year of the dream being cut short for G2 and NiKo with a result way below anyone’s expectations.
In the first few months of 2024, G2 experienced the complete opposite of what went down the year before. They only placed 5-6th at BLAST Premier Spring Groups and IEM Katowice, but swept through their RMR matches and reached the playoffs of the PGL Major Copenhagen after a grueling 3-2 Elimination Stage record. Three years since their last playoff appearance, G2 pulled off a 2-0 victory over MOUZ in the quarterfinals where NiKo himself turned back the years and dropped 39 kills with 100 average damage per round (ADR). They matched up against NAVI in the semifinals, making it their first meeting in a Major playoff since the Grand Final of Stockholm 2021. Even though Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov put the team on his back and led the comeback charge on Map 3, it still was not enough. NAVI bested G2 with a close 2-1 series and eventually made history as the first-ever CS2 Major champions, while NiKo and company could only watch their rivals celebrate from the sidelines.
By August, it was reported that NiKo was set to join Falcons at the beginning of 2025, marking an end to his four-year tenure with G2. Fast-forward four months later and the story was set. NiKo’s last dance with G2 would also be his final opportunity to give the organization its first-ever Major championship. The team performed brilliantly in the months leading up to Shanghai with consistent podium finishes and even wins at the BLAST Fall and World Finals. G2 went into the RMR stage as the #1 team on Valve’s ranking system and #2 on HLTV’s leaderboard, once again placing them in conversations on who could lift the trophy in Shanghai.
G2 only dropped one game at the European RMR and won three consecutive matches at the Elimination Stage of the Shanghai Major to secure back-to-back playoff appearances. They made it out of the quarterfinals thanks to NiKo’s consistency in the first two maps and a clutching masterclass from Mario “malbsMd” Samayoa on Mirage. It wasn’t an easy path for G2 by any means, but you could sense that the momentum and motivation were there for them. Two best-of-three matches from the greatest accomplishment in the game.
But, alas, the final chapter in NiKo’s story with G2 would end in the most painful of heartbreaks. After a tough loss on FaZe’s selection of Anubis, G2 was unable to close out a 12-10 score on the second map, Nuke, which allowed Robin “ropz” Kool and the rest of his crew to sweep the series and deny any shot at a comeback. Apart from their Grand Final appearance in Stockholm, the Shanghai Major was G2’s best shot at the title. They already had NiKo, one of the greatest mechanical players of all time, Janusz “Snax” Pogorzelski, a former Major champion now calling the shots, and Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov, who is currently the best AWPer in the world and arguably the #1 player of the year, yet they still couldn’t finish the story.
What’s next for NiKo?
Falcons isn’t promising
NiKo has competed at the highest level of CS for nearly a decade now. He’s been through all the ups and downs of professional life having stood on top at the most prestigious tournaments of all time, but could never replicate the same success at the Major. Of course, there’s always 2025 and beyond for NiKo, but the reality is that Falcons isn’t exactly a team that is Major-winning quality at the moment. They’re on yet another rebuilding phase as Emil “Magisk” Reif is currently the only player left on the official roster. Marco “Snappi” Pfeiffer, Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen, and Pavle “Maden” Bošković were benched after Falcons’ struggles at the RMR, while s1mple announced that he would not continue his loan spell with the team moving forward.
It’s likely that NiKo won’t find too much Major success with Falcons, but that doesn’t mean his story is over quite yet. He’s still one of the world’s best players at 27 years old and five years younger than when his former captain Finn “karrigan” Andersen became the oldest Major champion of all time. Only time will tell, but perhaps one day we will see NiKo finally cry tears of joy as he turns his impossible dream into a spectacular reality.
