You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

In the case of cadiaN, “hero” might be a subjective term, but let’s pretend that HEROIC at least have some fans.

Things just haven’t gone well for our favourite loudmouth Dane since he was stabbed in the back by his teammates. Whether it’s the mess that was Liquid or the mess that was Astralis, the poor guy really just can’t catch a break.

But as Astralis suffer yet another early elimination from an event, is it really his fault?

Maybe.

cadiaN didn’t exactly have his greatest moments over at BLAST Open Lisbon, in fact, he probably had some of his worst. But there are many IGLs in tier 1 who have put in similar performances, and they tend to get the piss taken out of them more than they get legitimate criticism.

When it comes to Astralis, the problem is more the fact that they don’t have the players to make up for cadiaN performing badly. device isn’t what he was, jabbi is inconsistent, Staehr is known to drop a stinker here and there and stavn… the less said about him the better.

If you look at the other national teams currently making waves in tier one, those teams are full of aim demons. Think of XANTARES and Wicadia, Techno and Senzu, who on Astralis is capable of ripping a head off like they are?

stavn isn’t even capable of getting a kill in a big match for crying out loud.

There’s things they could try: cadiaN could AWP instead of device, and they could even beg blameF to return just to beat up stavn every time he chokes. But neither of those options seem feasible, and neither of them really fix the problem.

In truth, Astralis is just a poisoned chalice for any IGL right now. They’re an org hanging on to their glory days in a bygone era, and they’re lucky to still even be at big events.

Danish CS has died a slow and painful death, and honestly, it makes us a little bit sad that one of Counter-Strike’s great entertainers has been caught up in that death.