Top 20 players of 2019: KRIMZ (17)

Coming in at No.17 in our ranking of the best players of 2019, powered by Xtrfy and LOOT.BET, is Freddy "⁠KRIMZ⁠" Johansson, who makes his fourth appearance on a top 20 list for his impact during fnatic's deep runs and his solid displays in the latter stages of Big Events.

Top 20 players of 2019: Introduction

KRIMZ has managed to maintain a consistently high level since he burst onto the competitive scene back in 2013. After coming through 1.6, he began to make his name as part of a young generation of talent emerging in Sweden, at a time when NIP were the kings of the world and fnatic were still trying to find their place in the game with some of the players who had transitioned from their 1.6 team.

In the summer of 2013, he joined up with Refuse, the team that would go on to create LGB eSports after the Greek organisation failed to raise enough funds to send the players to DreamHack Bucharest. With Olof "⁠olofmeister⁠" Kajbjer in tow, the team quickly moved up the ladder, ending the year by placing top-eight at the DreamHack Open Winter Major and pushing NIP to their limit in the Svecup Grand Finals.

The Swedish team hit new heights in 2014 after the additions of Simon "⁠twist⁠" Eliasson and Isak "⁠cype⁠" Rydman, who replaced Mikail "⁠Maikelele⁠" Bill and Alexander "⁠SKYTTEN⁠" Carlsson in the lineup. At the EMS One Katowice Major, LGB beat Natus Vincere, Complexity and the reigning Major champions of fnatic before being stopped in the semi-finals by Virtus.pro, who would go on to win the title in front of the home crowd at Spodek.

"I played a lot of Swedish gathers on mIRC, and I think it was Maikelele who contacted me after he had seen some potential in me. I guess I was pretty lucky. With LGB, we were not expected to win events or anything like that, but we played without pressure and just had fun. Of course we were all a bit nervous at the start, but that feeling died out pretty early after the first matches."

LGB ended up disappearing just as quickly as they had arrived. In May, the team parted ways with the organisation due to financial reasons, and soon afterwards players began to jump ship, with Dennis "⁠dennis⁠" Edman being the first one, followed by KRIMZ himself. You can read more about how this team left their mark on the game by reading our feature titled "The story of LGB eSports".

Just a month later, KRIMZ and olofmeister found a new home in fnatic, replacing Jonatan "⁠Devilwalk⁠" Lundberg and Andreas "⁠znajder⁠" Lindberg. So began one of the organisation’s greatest stories as the team went on to win a whopping 15 LAN titles between June 2014 and December 2015, also making history as the first to secure back-to-back Major crowns following their victories at ESL One Katowice and ESL One Cologne. By the end of 2015, KRIMZ was also one of the hottest names in the game, with two consecutive appearances in the top 20 player of the year ranking, at No.9 in 2014 and No.7 in 2015.

"Every game we played we 100% felt that we were the better team, and it did not matter if we had a poor half or a bad start to an event. We could lose a half 13-2 and just roll people over. It feels amazing to have accomplished something big in the game and to be the first to win back-to-back Majors."

fnatic were able to carry their incredible form from late 2015, after replacing Markus "⁠pronax⁠" Wallsten with dennis, into 2016 and added three more titles to their collection before olofmeister was ruled out of action due to a wrist problem. The best player of 2015 returned to activity in the summer, but fnatic could not rediscover their best form in the months that followed and the relationship began to deteriorate, to the point that, in August, Jesper "⁠JW⁠" Wecksell, Robin "⁠flusha⁠" Rönnquist and KRIMZ left for GODSENT to link up with pronax and znajder. For KRIMZ, that was merely a brief chapter as just two months later, he had a change of heart and returned to fnatic in a deal that saw Jonas "⁠Lekr0⁠" Olofsson move in the opposite direction.

2017 was an equally rough year for KRIMZ and for fnatic in general as the team continued to struggle for form, even after the returns of flusha and JW. Things then seemingly went from bad to worse as olofmeister decided to further his career in FaZe, but fnatic turned that into a positive and ended the year with deep runs at the ESL Pro League Season 6 Finals and at the ECS Season 4 Finals after re-signing Lekr0 and promoting Maikil "⁠Golden⁠" Selim from the academy squad.

KRIMZ brought out the best version of himself again in 2018 and lit up the game during the first months of the year, earning an MVP medal in fnatic’s victory at the WESG 2017 World Finals - the team’s second consecutive success after previously coming out on top of IEM Katowice. But despite those results, not all was well in the fnatic camp, and the rest of the year was a revolving door of players as the team tried to find the right formula once again. Results were anything but consistent, but KRIMZ remained a key contributor and was named the 9th best player of the year.

fnatic got back into the action at iBUYPOWER Masters, an event that suggested that the improvements from late 2018 had already been undone. The Swedes barely made it out of a group in which they only had to face Cloud9 and Complexity, and then lost out to eventual champions Liquid in the semi-finals. KRIMZ was the team’s top performer on three of the six maps that they played and ended the tournament with a 1.09 rating - the sole fnatic player to leave Los Angeles with an above-average rating.

Ahead of the IEM Katowice Major, fnatic fans rejoiced after it was announced that both KRIMZ and JW had signed three-year contract extensions with the organisation. "For me, it felt like they really trusted me and what I could do," KRIMZ says. "And fnatic have always felt like where I belong. I could not have wished for a better organisation." Disaster would strike the team later that month as they crashed out of the Major in the New Challengers Stage following defeats to ViCi, Winstrike and G2 - marking the first time that fnatic failed to reach the last-16 stage of a Major.

"We were all really disappointed with our performances. We had come off a two-week bootcamp in Katowice where we had been so good in practice and really played to our true potential. The first match was delayed for some hours and something happened, I don’t remember what exactly, but we weren’t that strong mentally at that point. It was just a bad time but also the start of something we needed to work on."

The WESG Finals seemed to be the perfect event for fnatic to reset and get a much-needed trophy in the bag, but it only served to heighten the Swedes' woes. KRIMZ, who had been the team’s top performer at the Major with a 1.15 rating, remained a key figure in Chongqing - despite a few shaky performances in the group stage - but could not prevent fnatic from missing out on the final as they were upset by AGO, who even inflicted a painful 16-0 Inferno defeat on the helpless Swedes.

"That was my worst memory of 2019. We were not really a team at that event. Everything felt wrong. I was very upset and frustrated about everything, which did not make our situation back then much better. There is absolutely nothing to take from that tournament. Just put it in the trash, where it belongs."

At that point, it looked like this lineup was dead and buried, but, in true fnatic fashion, the team showed that there was still plenty of life in them. By the time StarSeries i-League Season 7 rolled around, fnatic were just No.15 in the world, but they took the scalps of a series of teams higher in the rankings - NIP, NRG, North and Vitality - en route to a runner-up finish, with KRIMZ second on the list of EVPs with a 1.19 rating (11% higher than the team’s average), four Player of the Map picks, 0.80 kills per round and an 86.8 ADR.

fnatic were able to use the momentum from the previous tournament at IEM Sydney, where they once again managed to reach the final. Even with a few bad maps, which brought his tournament rating down to 1.11, KRIMZ was a valuable contributor with a 1.29 rating in map wins leading to victories, eleven 1.15+ rated maps and just as many clutches.

"It was the beginning of something new and we had just brought in our mental coach, Jens [Hofer]. He made a real difference and it felt like everyone in the team just had a new point of view in terms of how we had to think. We had a really bad start in Sydney in the groups but we didn't fall that easily as we had three or four months earlier."

As the summer season approached, fnatic's old issues came back to haunt them. KRIMZ recorded his first below-average tournament rating of the year (0.98) in the team's 9th-12th place finish at DreamHack Masters Dallas, and he did not fare much better at the Europe Minor, where he was barely in the green (1.01 tournament rating) as fnatic placed fourth following defeats to MOUZ and CR4ZY to miss their first Major after 14 consecutive appearances.

More misery was to come for the Swedes, who also crashed out early at their next two events, the ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals, where they were surprised by Heroic, and ESL One Cologne, where KRIMZ posted a year-low 0.96 rating. As the tournament season came to an end and most teams turned their attention to the StarLadder Major, fnatic benched Richard "⁠Xizt⁠" Landström and twist with a view to entering "a new phase”.

"It was for sure one of the toughest periods in my life. We had got a glimpse of what we could do at the previous two tournaments but it was a long way down from there. We were another team when we played official matches. I cannot explain why it was like that, but it was a horrible time.

"It sucked not going to a Major, but we asked ourselves what we were going to do from that point. Either we continued doing what we were doing or we changed everything."

With flusha and Golden back in the fold, fnatic travelled to Malmö with hope rather than expectation, and they surpassed even the craziest fan's wildest dreams as they lifted the trophy after an impressive playoff run that included victories over NIP, Astralis and Vitality, ending a title-less run that stretched back 19 months.

In the Swedish city, KRIMZ returned to his best form with some year-high numbers: 1.22 rating, 1.28 Impact, +78 KDD and five Player of the Map picks, but it was still not enough for him to edge out a red-hot Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut in the race for the MVP medal.

"We maybe didn’t expect a win straight away, but we knew that we were capable of doing it. Maybe it was a mix of heart and a bit of luck that got us all the way. We were really prepared for that event, though. The bootcamp in fnatic’s headquarters had gone so well, so we went into that tournament with confidence in every aspect. Just like in Sydney, we had a sloppy/bad group stage, but we turned it around because we did not fall like before.

"Winning Dreamhack Masters Malmö was my best memory of 2019. It was great to play with my brothers in arms again."

Riding the wave after that Malmö victory, fnatic finished in second place at StarSeries i-League Season 8, where they made a spectacular run in the group's lower bracket after suffering an early defeat against Renegades. This time around, KRIMZ was not amongst fnatic's standout players of the tournament, mostly due to his high number of maps with below-average ratings (10 out of 21). He was still far from his best in fnatic’s semi-final run at the ECS Season 8 Finals, where he had a year-low 0.85 Impact and just a 69.8 ADR, ending six of the eight maps that he played with 1+ ratings but just one of them above the 1.30 mark.

KRIMZ ended the year on a high note, with his fourth EVP mention of the year at the ESL Pro League Season 10 Finals, one of the most stacked competitions of 2019. After a slow start to the tournament, with five maps in the red as fnatic were made to work hard to make it out of the groups, KRIMZ picked up the pace in the playoffs, averaging a 1.15 rating to help his team to reach the final. The Swede made the tournament’s EVP list in part thanks to the incredible heights that he reached, which included a record-breaking 44 frags in regulation against MIBR, which you can find below:

KRIMZ admitted his frustration after coming so close to adding to the team's Malmö campaign in Belek and in Odense, but after the struggles earlier in the year he was forced to view the glass half full.

"It was sad not to win those finals. I won’t lie, it was hard at the time, but some time after the games we always have a talk to remind us of what we have done. If you look at the bigger picture, it is impossible to be disappointed by what we have accomplished in this short period of time and with this amount of practice."

Why was KRIMZ the 17th best player of 2019?

Unlike in previous years, there was not a single stat in 2019 that pointed to KRIMZ being world class in any particular aspect of the game, but he still made the cut due to being above average at most things, most of the time. All things considered, he was fnatic's best player over the year and stood out in every deep run that the team made with four EVPs presences, including one from the only tournament that they won, Dreamhack Masters Malmö, where he was second in the race for the MVP medal.

But 17th was the highest he could go. Besides missing out on the main stages of both Majors, he endured a poor run of form that contributed to fnatic's group stage exits in the summer. The key factor that ultimately gave him the edge over teammate Ludvig "⁠Brollan⁠" Brolin in this top 20 ranking was that he remained a big-game player throughout the year. He averaged a 1.11 rating across 49 maps in big event playoffs (12th highest overall), showing up nearly every time his team needed him to in the decisive stages of tournaments.

"I am not that happy with my performances. I know I can do much more and I just need to push myself harder and harder to get where I want to be.

"I hope to keep up my standard of play all year long. To be the best for my team."

Bold prediction:

After tipping teammate Brollan for success in last year's top 20 article, KRIMZ heaped praise on Elias "⁠Jamppi⁠" Olkkonen. The Finnish AWPer, who was featured in our 'One for the future' series last summer, came close to joining OG before the team decided to go in a different direction, allegedly due to a disqualifying VAC ban that dated back to 2013. He was recently benched by SJ and his future remains a mystery.

Elias "⁠Jamppi⁠" Olkkonen

"I have seen some gameplay from Jamppi, he is young and he is already that good individually. It will be fun to follow his journey if he is able to compete, because of his VAC ban."

Stay tuned to our Top 20 players of 2019 ranking and take a look at the Introduction article to learn more about how the players were selected. This year's ranking is supported by:

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