You do realise that you can make up your own minds on who the top 20 are and what rankings they come in. Everyone treats the top 20 and rankings like it’s an objective list and numbers made by God himself when in reality one’s made by a computer which can account for zero context and can’t show supportive or in game leading aspects In game and another’s made by some Serbian guy that runs this website.
Lads we can have our own opinions on things and that doesn’t mean BlameF is a shit player because he “baits” or that RpK is a god sent gift but make sure you support your bold claims with more evidence than HiS RaTinG iS bEtTeR bY oNe pOiNt sO tHe OtHeR pLayEr iS sHiT.
The HLTV top 20 players list, just like the team rankings, is based on some metrics combined in a matter that make 'some' sense. Not even HLTV folks pretend it's perfect. There was an interesting hltvConfirmed podcast where they basically said it's not their fault ppl take the rankings so seriously. They even blamed orgs for using the hltv team/player rankings in their contract clauses, since it's subjective in the algorithm itself.
tl;dr the rankings provide SOME basis, but they're definitely not the conclusion. Toxic fanboys will be toxic and use them when it suits their dumb opinions. Just look at #2 . Nothing new.
Really it's nationalism combined with fandom. It doesn't actually matter you're right. And while I think the list is a fairly good indicator of who was good in a given year I don't think in a vacuum all things being equal there weren't a ton of players who aren't better then some of the players that were on the list this year.
That said it's still fun to read and I'm sure it's rewarding for the players as they will mention it as part of their individual goals so it's not really a bad thing. People can just be obnoxious about it.