NiKo: The CS:GO legend who never lifted a Major title

One of the best players in CS:GO history and legend of the game, Bosnian Nikola “NiKo” Kovač, has lifted many champion trophies throughout his entire career, but he could never be crowned a Major champion.

There is no doubt that NiKo’s career in the CS:GO scene and even since his Counter-Strike 1.6 days has been full of success; not for nothing has he managed to win over $1M in prize money, according to Liquipedia. However, every professional CS:GO player yearns to lift a Major trophy at least once in their career.

Now, with the elimination of G2 Esports in the Legends Stage of the Paris Major, this possibility for the team and NiKo has vanished, and now, he will only have a chance to win it in what will be Counter-Strike 2.

A successful career, but without winning a Major

NiKo began his career as a professional in esports in the Counter-Strike 1.6 era in 2011, where he was part of several teams. Then, with the arrival of CS:GO in 2012, he jumped with iNation, the Serbian team that had been his home for a few months in CS 1.6.

From then on, NiKo began to carve his path within the CS:GO competitive scene on Tier 2 and 3 teams until he made the big jump in the 2015 season to mousesports. That was the first time NiKo was part of a top-tier organization in his career.

While the player was in the mousesports lineup for two years, he failed to win a major trophy, and in 2017, he decided to sign with FaZe Clan, one of the best teams on the scene.

FaZe was a dominant force in the scene, but they came at a very bad time. Recall that Astralis implanted absolute supremacy during 2017,2018, and 2019. As a result, FaZe and NiKo could not be determinant in the Majors played in those seasons. However, he won important tournaments such as ESL One: New York 2017, Intel Extreme Masters XIII – Sydney, and EPICENTER 2018, among others.

NiKo and G2 were very close to the title

In 2020, NiKo left the FaZe Clan lineup after three years with the team to join a new project with G2 Esports, a historical team in the European scene building a solid team to try to be at the top of CS:GO.

After an extremely difficult start in 2021, where the team failed to get further than 5th-6th place in any tournament, G2 Esports slowly increased its level in the scene. NiKo and G2 won the BLAST Premier: Spring Showdown 2021, beating Team Spirit in the Grand Final by 2-1, and, from that moment on, the team started to be always among the TOP 4 of the tournaments they participated.

In November 2021, G2 Esports faced in the final of the PGL Major Stockholm 2021 against NaVi, the team that completely dominated the scene in that season. In the end, the Ukrainian team left G2 at the gates of the Major after a resounding 2-0 victory.

2022 was an odyssey for G2 Esports

In the 2022 season, G2 Esports started the season very well, finishing in second place at Intel Extreme Masters XVI – Katowice. However, this only marked the debacle for this team, as from here on, they failed to perform well in any of the S-Level tournaments they participated in.

When the organization decided to sign Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov and Justin “jks” Savage, we could appreciate a big change. However, the team seemed to cohere quickly and won the BLAST Premier: World Final 2022 to close the season positively.

Starting in 2023, the successes continued, and they managed to win the first two top-level tournaments played, the Spring Groups and the IEM Katowice 2023. Then, thanks to jks, m0NESY, and NiKo, the team qualified for the last Major in the CS:GO era, the BLAST.tv Paris Major.

Finally, after a Legends Stage to forget, G2 Esports crashed out after finishing with a 1-3 record, and NiKo’s chances of winning their first and only CS:GO Major vanished.

Header: BLAST