The end of racism

When SPUNJ made a bet that no international team would be top three HLTV for six months consecutively in 2019, it seemed like a reasonable bet - in the same way that betting that, of course, everyone won’t have internet access in the future might have seemed reasonable in the 90’s.

Or betting that a Mongolian team wouldn’t ever make a Major final three years ago.

Alas, SPUNJ was as wrong as it’s possible to be. He has, to his credit, not exactly hidden from this fact, and it’s easy for me to sit back and take the Mickey because I’m not a public figure losing money on this. That sentiment was pretty common at the time because all we’d ever really known were national teams, and we all sometimes fall into the trap of believing that the way things are is the way they’re meant to be.

It’s why nobody was buying the SG or the UMP way back when, and it’s why League of Legends pros still play objectively bad champions like Leblanc. Just because pros do something doesn’t make it the best way to play - they’re humans capable of falling for the same fallacies as you and I.

Looking back, it’s obvious it was going to be wrong, right? How can international teams possibly be worse than national teams in the long run? It’s not like that in any traditional sport really, and although you can argue it’s true in LoL, that’s because there’s more Chinese and Korean players than the rest of the world combined.

Let’s talk about Aurora, Astralis, and why national teams, while fun, are outdated and inefficient.

Turkish despair

Aurora bombed out of Stage 2 of the Major 1-3 by losing to Astralis, after losing BO1s to PARIVISION and FaZe. If you look at those names, you might think that’s not all that embarrassing, but FaZe are bloody awful most of the time and definitely were in Stage 1, PARIVISION have four randoms and Jame, and it’s December 2025, so losing to Astralis is always embarrassing.

The first half of the year they were pretty damn good in truth, making a boatload of playoffs (about as good as they could have hoped at the time), but in the second half we wanted them to push on and be a genuine threat.

That simply never happened, and they have regressed. I will say in fairness, they’ve been miles better than a Turkish national team could ever realistically have been expected to be - it’s just that they could have been better if they weren’t, you know, a Turkish team.

This was meant to be their year, but the second half turned out to be a disastrous one punctuated with the occasional highlight. The win at PGL Masters Bucharest papered over some pretty wide cracks, and the Major exposed them once again.

They need changes, but how on Earth are they ever going to find improvements on what is, quite literally, five of the six best Turkish players ever?

They hit their peak, plateaued, and now they’re going to decline. This is the natural life cycle of any half-decent roster, but most of them can change things when they get stale. When you’re in Turkey, your choices are sign xfl0ud or give up.

MAJ3R is an average-to-below-average caller, especially at the tier Aurora want to get to. Can you really foresee MAJ3R outcalling apEX, FalleN, even bLitz? I can’t, but I also can’t see who else could do this role. If you want someone else to call, it’s got to be a transition to IGLing for woxic, or God forbid, XANTARES.

I swear to all that is holy, if Aurora make XANTARES IGL I will lose it. The next deep dive I write will be dedicated to VALORANT, or Pokemon, or Solitaire. I will lose my love of Counter-Strike if XANTARES starts IGLing.

woxic could do it, probably quite badly, but he’s barely good enough as an AWPer as is. Not that’s he’s terrible or anything - he’s still top ten on LAN this year - but he’s been pretty mediocre in the second half of the year and you need a top AWPer to be a top team. There’s like five good AWPers, and he ain’t any of them.

He’s lower rated than broky since June, and the community wants his head on a pike.

Now imagine, for a second, that they weren’t a Turkish national team. They could sign Chr1zN (before he went to HEROIC), or siuhy when he inevitably gets kicked from Liquid. They could get lucky and replace woxic with a better AWPer (he was fine in the first half of the year, but ultimate-level second half). They could maybe even upgrade jottAAA or even Wicadia to a more reliable second star.

This is how top teams operate, and how they stay ahead of the inevitable tide of regression.

Aurora are destined to spiral, and there’s nothing they can do about it.

Astralis’ slow decline

You don’t need me to recap 2018 Astralis, and quite frankly, I’d rather not think about it.

They’ve since slowly but surely got to a point where nobody takes them seriously, and now have given up even bothering to pay their players.

It’d be easy for me to sit here and say ‘I wouldn’t pay them either’, but at least they beat Aurora.

They’re not the worst team in the world right now, thanks to HooXi coming in and improving them - which probably says a lot - they’ve not even gotten worse firepower-wise - but they’re still nowhere near as good as they were or could be.

‘Could be’ IF they drop the Danish gimmick and grow up like everyone else.

Astralis have in theory signed all the best available Danish players for the last few years. They’ve tried blameF, k0nfig, cadiaN, jabbi, stavn and loads of other bad players. Nothing has worked.

b0rup, Staehr, Lucky, farlig, br0… I can go on for ages.

It’s almost like you can’t make a world class Danish team any more, and any opinion to the contrary is cope.

This is an entire nation of support players and blameF. It’s like trying to build a car out of engines.

There cannot possibly be a Denmark-based solution because they’ve tried every single player you’ve heard of. Sure, they could tempt karrigan back with a 50% off zimmer frames coupon or give TeSeS a get-out-of-Saudi-Arabia-free card in exchange for retiring from winning trophies, but they’d still be missing a key element to any great team.

Great players.

Back when Astralis were great, there was no team with a roster that looks like Vitality’s, or Falcons’. There was no superstar-laden team who could plug any gaps in their team by signing a kyousuke, or mezii, or flameZ. There was nobody who had figured out that you’d have a better chance of winning by speaking English to ZywOo than Danish to b0rup.

Astralis can, like Aurora, only fix their issues by going international - but they have a glorified internet cafe in the middle of Copenhagen, so they won’t.

Are national teams dead?

Well, obviously not. The MongolZ have done an admirable job, Spirit are a top four team (not technically full Russian, but they all do speak Russian naturally), and Aurora were good for a while. It’s just that they can’t really stay there, with one exception.

Russian teams can do it because they seemingly have an endless supply of incredible players - though weirdly they have a bit of a dearth of IGLs right now. They’re the sole exception. Even Brazilians have started signing Eastern Europeans, and look how that has worked for them.

The MongolZ lost Senzu and all of a sudden the writing seems to be on the wall. controlez looks better than expected, but The MongolZ are not going to a Major final again any time soon. Aurora have hit a wall, Astralis hit it years ago, and 3DMAX are still rolling with ex3rcice.

“That’s harsh on him he’s not even the worst play-” I simply don’t care. He would not play for any other team in the top 15.

This was never more obvious than when BIG won loads of (fake) trophies with XANTARES and then decided to go back to being full German, before realising they don’t have anyone with nearly as much star power as him and being crap again.

The concept, while fun for fans and enjoyable to watch, is pretty outdated. There’s a reason every top football team is a mix of nationalities.

The best meals aren’t made entirely of meat, and they certainly aren’t made entirely out of vegetables, no matter what your vegan friend tells you.

Look, I’d love nothing more than a full English team to win the Major, but I’m also not a complete moron. The best we’re ever going to get is mezii on Vitality, and I’m perfectly okay with that. You can’t build a team of five English players because at least one of them has to call, and that would require them to understand the game AND four players to listen.

Neither of those are reasonable requests.

You can only make an English player work by surrounding them with reasonable people. You can only win with XANTARES by not dragging him down with his fellow Turkish players. You can only make a Danish team work by signing some bleeding firepower.

The entire concept of national teams is inefficient because you simply cannot sign the best player for each role. Unless you’re in a nation where you have multiple top players for each role, which nobody is realistically, you cannot replace like-for-like when something goes wrong, or someone falls out.

If the best IGL in your region is an AWPer, you can’t sign the best AWPer in your region. If the best AWPer in your region doesn’t like some of the best players (woxic and Calyx hated each other for a long time and stopped there being a ‘top’ Turkish team for years), you can’t make the best team.

When Vitality were French, they had to sign Kyojin. When they taught ZywOo English, they signed ropz and flameZ. If that’s not an advert for going international, I don’t know what is.

Many a great player in history was wasted by this aversion to speaking English. kennyS played on some heinous teams with horrendous players. olofmeister had to play with Devilwalk. JamYoung is playing with f-cking Attacker.

Can national teams ever come back?

This might be a bit radical, but they can if Valve decided to force a rule where every team had to have a core of national players.

The WESG and the Esports Nations Cup have tried this and it’s never really worked, because it’s completely removed from the rest of the circuit. It’s hard to care about a national team when it’s only for one event a year and not taken all that seriously.

It’s like the US Olympic basketball team most years - the best players aren’t that interested.

This wouldn’t happen if Valve enforced it for the rest of the year, and made every team a national-based team, similarly to how football has homegrown rules, but more aggressive.

Why would they do this?

Honestly, I’ve no idea. Maybe it could be something to stop a team playing in a region they’re not from, or maybe they just like the idea of every team being nation based. It might be good for views, for fan retention, or just for the vibes.

Spirit would instantly be the best team in the world. Again.

I can’t see any other way for national teams to be able to stay relevant for any length of time. They can exist, they can win, they can even - if they’re as clever as The MongolZ - make changes and keep improving within their region.

But they will hit a wall. Every nation bar Russia has hit this wall (and even then, there’s a Belarussian and a Ukrainian in Spirit’s recent pick-ups), and some day they will too. We’re already seeing issues with IGLs, especially as they can’t sign Ukrainians any more.

10 years ago it seemed insane to suggest that Swedish, French and Danish national teams wouldn’t be viable, that they’d run out of good players, that French Counter-Strike would be reliant on the 15th best team and two players on the second best team.

The MongolZ are already hitting it. Aurora have hit it. Astralis are lying, bleeding out against the wall, lifeless and not breathing. National teams are dying out, and it’s a damn shame.

National teams becoming more irrelevant is no fun for anyone. Fans love them, and you get far more passionate audiences when they have a national team to support. Moreover, it’s easier for a new fan to get involved if they can pick a team of players from their own country to support.

Tribalism is dangerous when not harnessed properly, but harnessed properly you get FURIA fans in Rio, Vitality fans in Paris, BIG fans in Germany. Actually… maybe that last one is not helping my argument.

Fervent support makes everything feel more important, makes people care more, and makes the stakes higher. People love watching Liverpool vs Man United more than they care about Man United vs Chelsea. People would rather watch AC Milan vs Inter than Inter vs Napoli. People get into football and support their local team.

That’s half of the fun.

Esports has this weird barrier to supporting where you have to pick a team, rather than have one assigned to you by the sorting hat. When I found out there was no English team at the top level, it took me a while to really get involved with CS, because who else was I supposed to support?

What was I supposed to pick a team based on? Pick the best team? Pick a team who looked like fun guys to have a pint with? Pick a team who would annoy the most people on HLTV’s forums? (It was this one)

Most people don’t really have an emotional attachment to their favourite team because of this, whereas French fans really love 3DMAX. Brazilians really love Brazilian teams. I want to love a team like that.

But I can’t - because national teams are dying, and because being level 8 on FACEIT put me at about the 7th best player in the UK, and that’s simply natural selection. They were a product of their time, and now they’re outdated, outshot and inefficient.

Just like every single game Shroud has called the Counter-Strike killer.