gla1ve is heavily in the mix, and so is karrigan - but there’s other acceptable answers, and not picking either is totally reasonable. You’re not insane.

The GOATest GOAT of all time

The ‘greatest player of all time’ debate is pretty boring, because it’s almost certainly just donk, and if it isn’t yet, it will be.

But in the wake of gla1ve’s retirement we ask a more interesting question with a much harder-to-find answer: who is the greatest IGL of all time?

You probably already have your answer, because most people have drawn their battlelines and pick a Dane to lead them into battle - but with karrigan spluttering and gla1ve giving up, maybe it’s not that simple.

The case for gla1ve

I mean it’s bleeding obvious, isn’t it?

He was the leader (and in many cases, the star rifler) of quite literally the most dominant team ever, and to many the greatest team ever.

He won everything, including four Majors, three of ‘em back-to-back. He’s got a trophy cabinet the size of the metaphorical ‘controversies’ section of Thorin’s Wikipedia page, and a list of accolades longer than stavn’s neck.

If there is a trophy to be won in Counter-Strike, gla1ve has led Astralis to it. Except Cologne, but that doesn’t sound as good.

At the end of the day, sports (and esports) are about winning, and that is what gla1ve has done. Relentlessly. On an objective, how-much-do-they-win scale, gla1ve is unmatched and probably never will be matched.

But it’s not just his substance, it’s his style. Astralis were gamechangers, innovators, meta-definers and in this writer’s humble opinion, game-ruiners.

As if playing Inferno wasn’t f-cking bad enough before.

He joined an Astralis team who were known for being nearly men, and turned them into a brutalist, efficient, killing machine. They went from a team who would inevitably finish fourth to a team who were inevitable.

Moreover, he did it through revolutionising the game. Not through how you handle your blaster, not through faking A and going B, but through far, far darker arts.

gla1ve and Astralis reinvented how you could use grenades. HE grenades in particular, with Astralis racking up exorbitant amounts of damage with the little pomegranates.

They also used flashes better than anyone else, and gla1ve did some very silly things in the middle of smokes as well. They were quite simply the smartest, most efficient, most dominant team in the world.

And gla1ve, therefore, was the smartest, most efficient, most dominant IGL.

The case against gla1ve

Don’t get me wrong; if you’re going to only ever be good once, win four Majors when you do it and be the best team ever.

But outside of the Exodia team, gla1ve never really achieved anything. It’s not entirely his fault - Astralis were horrendously mismanaged and never gave him the pieces he needed again, and ENCE couldn’t afford to, but when we get onto the next guy, you’ll see that you need to be able to make it work with more than just the best.

What I’m saying is: gla1ve is Pep Guardiola. He only really performed with the best team of all time. Once Astralis fell apart he could never get the magic back.

His individual level was among the best in the world back in his pomp, and that slid down to just above the level of an average caller, losing some of what made gla1ve special, and everyone else had studied the NartOutHere videos by now.

We all know how to nade Banana and do a four-molly execute now. Astralis had lost their edge - gla1ve had lost his unique selling point. If he’s no longer a top 20 player in the world, and everyone has the knowledge he essentially invented, all you’re left with is… well, MAJ3R. Or MSL. Someone average.

That Exodia comparison works, really; Exodia is the best card in the entire game if you have four other specific named cards, and is otherwise pretty awful.

Yes, he had a brief moment in ENCE where they finished in the top six of Katowice, which is mightily impressive. I would like to remind you that alex once IGL’d Movistar Riders to a top six at an IEM too.

These big results happen from time to time, and it’s not best to draw deep conclusions from them. If gla1ve wasn’t who he was, everyone would have already forgotten who the IGL of that team was by the summer.

Like, off-hand, do you know who Legacy’s IGL is?

gla1ve had a period where his peak as an IGL is pretty much unmatched, and if you want to go by the biggest trophy cabinet, the highest peak, the most successful, you’re probably picking gla1ve as your GOAT.

The case for karrigan

Jack of all trades, master of a few of them.

If gla1ve is Pep Guardiola then karrigan is Carlo Ancelotti. If gla1ve is Exodia, then karrigan is Pot of Greed. If gla1ve is the keys to a Lambo, karrigan is a skeleton key.

You get the idea. He can do everything.

There’s a famous Sir Alex Ferguson quote that goes “give me Zidane and ten planks of wood and I’ll win you a Champions League”, and that’s sort of true of karrigan. Give him four planks of wood, and you have EnVy, where he still overperformed.

That’s not to say he hasn’t had great players and great teams, but he’s won trophies with talent that you wouldn’t put as the best in the world, and every team he’s been on he has improved. He’s played in multiple roles, multiple styles, in multiple eras, even in multiple languages.

He famously lost a Major final, but had the resilience to come back up with an arguably less talented team and win the next time.

He has been knocked down so many times - hence playing for Team EnVy, which it bears repeating, he had to play for - but he always steps back up to the top with a new team and a new style.

He learns, adapts, controls the egos on his team and improves them.

karrigan is also absolutely money on stage. We all know what I’m talking about. We all know the clap is coming. It’s his version of the Carlo Ancelotti eyebrow raise.

He’s not fazed (pun intended) by the crowd, and no matter how his team are playing they will be better when the lights are bright - which is another thing he has improved on through his career. He learnt from his time on Astralis and figured out how to be stone cold on stage, because he kept improving.

The case against karrigan

He is really bad though.

He has his moments and usually has a big game each event, but right now it’s never been more apparent that if unc ever did have it, he doesn’t now. He simply cannot frag, and it’s dragging FaZe down.

It’s probably a big part of the reason, too, that he doesn’t have more trophies. His fragging is not a problem while his team is winning, but his team isn’t always winning, and there are many games where they'd probably win if he could kill a few more things.

It really brings him down against gla1ve and the third IGL on this list, who both are capable players who rarely let their team down in the server.

Also, his FaZe team with NiKo and rain should have won everything, but they had a chronic choking problem. His Astralis team – the one I just said he learnt from in order to be able to play on stage – were famous for falling apart on stage.

You can’t learn without making mistakes - and karrigan’s career is littered with them. The famous Major final loss came with a team that should never, ever have lost that Major, and there were some questionable rounds from them on the T side. This wasn’t just karrigan’s aim letting him down - his calling weighed down his world class players sometimes too.

He’s great on stage NOW, but he wasn’t always, and when you’re looking at his career as a whole, you have to take that into account. gla1ve never choked.

Yes, he adapts to his team mates and improves them, but he also had far and away the best team in the world and didn’t win as much as he should. It’s not like he’s Jerry, playing only with new talent, he’s had the best of the best at times.

He’s doing his legacy damage by continuing to play now when the game has left him. It’s not just that he can’t frag any more - his calling seems to be outdated too. You could be kind and call it off-meta, but we all know what I’m saying.

FaZe look two steps behind even the average teams nowadays, and it wasn’t like when they won the Major they were super revolutionary either. They just tried to get ropz and broky into man-down clutches and assume they would win. It’s not rocket science, and it probably wouldn’t work without ropz.

Which… it hasn’t, actually.

karrigan is a great leader, with a storied career. He’s also a poor Counter-Strike player who hasn’t won as much as he should have.

The case for FalleN

IF, and it’s a big if, FURIA win the Major, it becomes really hard to argue against FalleN as a pretty big contender.

gla1ve got the benefits of growing up in a region where there were hundreds of great leaders, a defined style, loads of fantastic players to learn from. karrigan too, and both were given stars to work with and turn gold into gold.

FalleN was given straw and asked to build Taj Mahal.

And yet, he did.

Brazilian Counter-Strike as we know it was built at the hands of FalleN. Nobody in the region could play at the top tier without his sign off. Everybody wanted to play with FalleN, or like FalleN.

He plucked coldzera from bumf-ck nowhere and turned him into the best player in the world. His entry-fragger was a half-deaf sheep dog. His support players were a guy who looked like blackbear and the Brazilian STYKO. He won two Majors.

He was one of the better AWPers in the world for a long time, and one of the few AWP IGLs who weren’t crap at one of the two parts of the job. He called around himself and coldzera and got them both in the HLTV top 20. As #1 and #2, no less.

karrigan was the leader of his team. gla1ve was the leader of the best team ever. FalleN was the leader of a whole continent.

And then, years later, when it felt like his career was karriganing down, he switched to rifling and now is the leader of the best team in the world again, despite the fact the team was completely unfancied upon inception.

He set aside his ego, passed the AWP to a young Kazakh kid, switched to a different language and now is set to win another Major (maybe).

A great player, a great leader, a guy who has reinvented himself as a rifler to win again. He built Brazil, he won two Majors from a region that had nothing before. Every player from SK, who he made world class, were nothing without him.

What argument could there be against him?

The case against FalleN

You know when you go for a job interview, and it’s going great, and then the interviewer says “what were you doing in this one year gap between jobs?” and you can’t tell the truth and say “fighting evil supercomputer” so you have to lie and say you were on a gap year?

Just me?

FalleN knows what I mean. He had a HUGE gap between being good in 2017 and being good in 2025. He’s finally recreated SK, having humbled himself six years too late, and that’s great, but it took him way too long.

It’s hard to call him better than gla1ve or karrigan, because he’s won less than gla1ve while not being anywhere near as versatile as karrigan. His spell on Liquid was hideous, and you can’t tell me karrigan wouldn’t have been great.

The arguments for FalleN are more abstract and based on what he built and his individual level, but as a leader he spent years building nothing afterwards.

Also, was he actually that good as a player?

FalleN was a very good AWPer for the time, but I’m not convinced he was ever the best AWPer in the world and though he did get HLTV #2 in 2016 with some pretty impressive stats, you have to remember this was back when they had very rudimentary stats, and his numbers were boosted by playing on the best team.

Watch with your eyes, and you see he was a world class combat AWPer and almost unbeatable in AWP vs. AWP duels, but he didn’t ever have the consistent impact that someone like dev1ce, kennyS or s1mple had through the years - especially after 2017.

That’s not exactly a criticism, but the main selling point of FalleN once Brazil was built was his individual level - and for a long time he wasn’t good enough to justify being the AWPer. It’s largely why his teams struggled for years.

He’s only started being a good leader again now he’s dropped the AWP - and the ego.

The case for apEX

I know, I know, but hear me out. He actually has a bigger trophy haul than gla1ve (albeit, not entirely as an IGL), has been the leader of different versions of Vitality and maintained an exceptionally high level for a long period of time.

There will never be another Astralis because they optimised the game to the point where nobody can have that much of an edge again; but nobody has come closer than Vitality.

They were obscenely dominant at the start of this year, and he’s done something similar with two different versions of the team too. His 2023 team wasn’t as dominant as this, but they won a decent amount including a Major.

He has two Majors as a leader, so whether or not you like his style, or believe that he’s really this good, the results do not lie. He is a fantastic IGL, against all odds.

They won seven tournaments in a row and started to look like the NIP 87-0 record could be in reach this year, in what is one of the most stacked fields we’ve ever seen. When gla1ve was winning event after event, he only had Team Liquid (who were, admittedly, very good) chasing his tail.

In MOUZ, apEX had a similar ankle-biting second team in the world on their heels, but third in the rankings was a team with donk, the best player ever, and a host of other extremely dangerous teams.

Even when things fell off, Vitality have still been close. They haven’t gone the way of, for example, karrigan’s FaZe, or MIBR with FalleN. He has stayed relevant even when things have started to go askew. Vitality have never truly been bad under his leadership.

He has had different players, different coaches, even slightly different styles, and won regardless. His team were the one everyone copied, a little bit like Astralis, but he has maintained his edge for the most part.

He is, inarguably, one of the best IGLs of all time.

The case against apEX

He’s French (this obviously doesn’t apply to you, our French reader)

It’s just quite hard to believe he’s that good, because he seems so flawed from the outside.

He clearly gets tilted easily and is very emotional, and by all accounts, a bit mad. That’s not a big issue in itself, but he can be hard to work with at times and we imagine he’s not fun to play with when things go wrong.

He’s also a much weaker player than both FalleN and gla1ve have been, and more selfish than karrigan. karrigan at least realises he’s pony and goes in first; apEX has gone from entry fragger when he was good to baiting a bit now he’s bad.

Watch what flameZ and mezii have to do every game on the T side and tell me they aren’t HooXi roles.

Even on CT side, he’s playing in Connector on Mirage. Connector! Get your garlic-stinking cheesey-arse to B and cower in a corner like a real IGL.

He’s not got the longevity of karrigan, or the peak level of gla1ve. He’s not as gifted as FalleN or gla1ve, or as versatile as karrigan. He’s not built something from scratch like FalleN. He’s not had a load of new teams like karrigan. He doesn’t have four Majors like gla1ve.

Some of that is just because he came late to the IGL game, in his defence.

Also, he’s never won anything without ZywOo. That’s not a big mark against (not like the others haven’t had great players), but sometimes it feels like anyone could build a system around him.

His team is extraordinarily good, and having mezii as your support player is absolutely insane. It’s like having Magic Johnson as your sixth man.

And his first Major as an IGL was clearly a Mickey Mouse one. Let’s not mess around.

He’s clearly extremely good - we just don’t know if he could lead a team that didn’t have one of the best players of all time yet.

So, John Writer, who is the best?

Sorry in advance for the boring answer, but it depends on what you value most.

If you’re looking for pure success, highest peak and ability as a leader and a player, gla1ve is probably your pick.

If you value leadership of any kind of players, versatility and ability to make any player look better and make a great team out of any mix of players, karrigan is your guy.

If you value personal skill, building and scouting as much as leading, innovation and success almost on a par with the best but from a standing start, FalleN is a very reasonable choice.

If you want a guy who will keep you around the top spot, can win with multiple cores and has been extremely dominant in an era where it seemed impossible, it’s not ridiculous to choose apEX.

Personally I’d pick FalleN, as long as FURIA win this Major. Winning two as an AWPer, and then one reinvented as a rifler is pretty much unheard of, and nobody else can boast anything like this. Winning them nine years apart, too, is pretty special

He found some of the best players in the world and coached them into winners, then made the brave move to bring in two players from Eastern Europe to universal confusion, then made them the best team in the world.

That doesn’t mean FalleN is the best, he’s just my choice. I won’t argue if you pick any of the others.

Unless you pick Stewie2k.