Top 20 players of 2020: KRIMZ (17)

In 17th place of our ranking of the top 20 players of 2020, powered by GG.BET and Xtrfy, comes Freddy "⁠KRIMZ⁠" Johansson, who makes his fifth appearance in the HLTV Top 20 on the back of big performances early in the year and a consistent level throughout.

Top 20 players of 2020: Introduction

KRIMZ first appeared in the international scene in the early days of CS:GO in 2013 with LGB, featuring some of Sweden's newest prospects at the time as well as Dennis "⁠dennis⁠" Edman, who had already made a name for himself in Counter-Strike 1.6. Despite being only the third-best team in the country behind the legendary Ninjas in Pyjamas and fnatic, the Swedish squad quickly rose up the ranks and made it to the first Major at DreamHack Winter 2013, where KRIMZ began his streak of 12 consecutive Major playoffs.

Having quickly established themselves as Sweden's most interesting candidates for a move up to one of the two biggest teams in the country, he and Olof "⁠olofmeister⁠" Kajbjer got the call up to fnatic just seven months after the Major debut and went on to reinvigorate the team led by Markus "⁠pronax⁠" Wallsten. Making his debut in the end-of-the-year ranking, KRIMZ was named the ninth best player of 2014 and helped the Swedish side become a contender for the title of the best team in the world as they clinched three out of four titles in the last two months of that year.

KRIMZ and the rest of the team looked to add a Major trophy to the resumé as they entered 2015 following their infamous exit from the previous Valve-sponsored tournament, DreamHack Winter 2014, where fnatic decided to forfeit their quarter-final series against LDLC after the organizers called for a replay of the third map, Overpass, in the aftermath of both teams' use of an illegal boost. fnatic managed that feat immediately and went on to become the first back-to-back Major champions with wins at ESL One Katowice and ESL One Cologne, kicking off an era that would last until early 2016, with olofmeister named the best player of 2015 and his long-time sidekick improving on the previous year's placing with the seventh spot.

"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."

In the meantime, the team parted ways with pronax as the team's dynamic duo reunited with dennis, with whom they would go on a streak of six tournament victories in a row before olofmeister's wrist problems took him out of competition for months after MLG Columbus. The superstar's sudden departure had a massive effect on the team. Even after his return in the summer, fnatic never found their winning form despite managing some deep runs, and just a few months later KRIMZ, Jesper "⁠JW⁠" Wecksell, and Robin "⁠flusha⁠" Rönnquist split up from olofmeister and dennis to link up with pronax and Andreas "⁠znajder⁠" Lindberg in GODSENT. The project didn't last very long, however, as KRIMZ quickly changed his mind and returned to fnatic, with JW and flusha following suit just a few months later.

The composition would never reach the same levels of success as before, though, between 2017 and 2019, the team went through multiple changes around the core duo of JW and KRIMZ, with flusha also leaving the team for close to a year towards the end of that period. In that tumultuous time, the Swedes only managed to pick up a few titles here and there as they were trying to find the right combination of experience, talent, and hunger, with KRIMZ still maintaining a solid level as he placed ninth in 2018 and 17th in 2019.

fnatic entered 2020 back in the position of an elite-level team, after the returns of Maikil "⁠Golden⁠" Selim and flusha towards the end of 2019 had helped the roster to stabilize and reach three finals in four tournaments. After the winter break, the Swedes didn't play at ICE Challenge and they weren't one of the partnered teams in the newly-formed BLAST Premier circuit either, so they had to wait until late February to play their first tournament of the year, IEM Katowice.

The team carried over their impressive form from the end of 2019 to Poland, and so did KRIMZ as he clinched his first Exceptionally Valuable Player (EVP) award of the year there. fnatic were the only ones to beat eventual champions Natus Vincere at the staple event, in a group stage series in which KRIMZ was a key figure and put in one of his best maps of the year with a 31-10 score (2.16 rating) on Dust2. They went on to reach the semi-finals after a close quarter-final victory over 100 Thieves, featuring another couple of highlight performances from the 26-year-old, but in the end Golden's squad faltered to the eventual runners-up, G2.

After having to move online with just one LAN showing in the bag, fnatic looked unaffected by the pandemic at first, qualifying for the Europe Minor undefeated and securing their first and only trophy of 2020 in ESL Pro League Season 11 Europe. The nearly month-long league culminated with Ludvig "⁠Brollan⁠" Brolin edging his teammate in the race to the MVP award, while KRIMZ added another EVP to his tally after leading fnatic to the grand final victory over MOUZ with a 1.31 rating in the narrow best-of-five affair.

"Honestly, I don't remember a lot about the first events of the year, just that we had a great mindset overall and communication that later would just turn into dust."

Things began to quickly fall apart for fnatic after their success in Pro League, however. Immediately after their maiden win, the team went out in the group stage of ESL One: Road to Rio due to some uncharacteristic early losses to teams like ENCE and Dignitas. Meanwhile, KRIMZ was far a far cry from the player who had excelled in the previous two months as he averaged an unremarkable 0.99 rating over 21 maps.

"We were not in a great state of mind, I would say. For me, personally, it was very tough to catch up to the other players online. I'm not blaming online games, just myself and that I didn't adapt early to it.

"The toughest challenge [in 2020] was to perform and adapt. Just a bad year from me and it cost a lot."

Nonetheless, he was quickly back in shape by the time DreamHack Masters Spring rolled around, despite the fact that fnatic were still looking rather shaky in June, barely making it to the playoffs from their group with just one win in three matches and getting eliminated at the hands of MAD Lions early on in the lower bracket. In the meantime, the squad also competed in BLAST Premier Spring Showdown without success, with two bad maps there putting KRIMZ in the red zone for the second time in 2020.

The first part of the season came to a close in the second Regional Major Ranking event, cs_summit 6, in which fnatic managed to redeem themselves from the Road to Rio flop with a respectable top-six finish. KRIMZ's displays in the tournament were among his least impressive of the year, but he still played a big role in some of the key matches, putting in a decisive performance in a group stage decider against G2 and another in the first round of the upper bracket, against Ninjas in Pyjamas.

When the action resumed in the middle of August, it looked like the month-long break had hurt fnatic's form. Although KRIMZ maintained a good level alongside Brollan in the first two events of the new season, losses to Astralis and Heroic sent the team packing early in ESL One Cologne, and a 3-4 record in ESL Pro League Season 12's long group stage put them out of contention for a playoff spot for the second consecutive time just a few weeks later.

"Those were some pretty rough months, but we never stopped working on our things. It didn't look so pretty from the results, but that is one thing I'm proud of that we did."

Things only started to look up again in early October, when fnatic battled through three difficult group stage series in IEM New York against Vitality, G2, and Complexity, before they fell to OG in another close affair in the semi-finals. KRIMZ put up several big displays en route to the top-four finish, adding another strong event to the list as his team's highest-rated player (1.13) and narrowly missing out on a third EVP mention.

After making their first playoff appearance in three tournaments, fnatic continued to fluctuate as the year was drawing to an end. The team made an auspicious start to DreamHack Open Fall but eventually petered out due to a much less impressive showing in the playoffs from both the squad and from KRIMZ individually, and his uninspiring form carried over to the next tournament, when fnatic bombed out in last place in IEM Beijing-Haidan — though at least he won this massive 1v4 clutch against Complexity there.

As they didn't play in BLAST Premier Fall and couldn't qualify for IEM Global Challenge, fnatic's last event of the year was Flashpoint 2. The Swedish side got invited directly by the organizers as one of the non-partnered participants and were one of the highest-ranked teams in attendance, so they looked slated for a deep run to end 2020 on a positive note. Earning his third and last EVP award of the year, KRIMZ was a consistent force in the group stage and continued to put up big numbers in the opening rounds of playoffs with 15 consecutive maps rated above 1.00. He only faltered in the upper bracket and consolidation finals against Virtus.pro and OG, in which two losses against the grand finalists saw fnatic place third in the $1 million tournament.

With 2020 in the rear-view mirror, we asked KRIMZ whether he thought he was able to fulfill his previous year's wish of keeping up his individual standards of play over the next twelve months and quizzed him about his hopes for 2021. In his responses, the Swede was surprised to hear he made the end-of-year list for the fifth time and, like many others, expressed his desire to return to LAN:

"I have no idea how I ended up on this list this year, but I guess I did something right (laughs).

"My wish for 2021 is to play LANs again and slowly get back to the arena environment with all the people."

Why was KRIMZ the 17th best player of 2020?

The 17th-best player of 2019 repeated his placing after performing well above average in almost every way in 2020, recording 0.70 kills per round, 0.64 deaths per round, a 71.9% KAST, and a 77.3 ADR, and he mainly recorded those stats by playing well in some of the year's most competitive events.

Although KRIMZ did not excel in some areas, he once again showed the ability to perform against the best of the best. His overall 1.08 rating goes up to 1.12, the tenth highest of all players, when you only consider the eight events that we included in the "Elite" category for 2020 due to featuring a higher level of competition, with fnatic having played six of them. Other than that, KRIMZ was one of the most successful clutchers of the year with 63 1vX situations won (14th most), and he also stood out in support damage — damage that did not result in his own kills — with 22.9 per round (seventh-highest).

He put in his best performances at the very start of the year, when he was an EVP at IEM Katowice and almost claimed an MVP medal in ESL Pro League Season 11 Europe. Those two performances alone outweighed any peaks from the players ranked below him and from those who didn't make this HLTV Top 20. That, combined with his solid consistency all year long (1.00+ ratings in nine out of 11 events), as well as a few more notable showings in tournaments such as DreamHack Masters Spring, IEM New York, and Flashpoint 2, helped him secure the 17th spot in this top 20.

Bold prediction

After tipping his teammate Brollan to become a star and putting Elias "⁠Jamppi⁠" Olkkonen in the spotlight in the previous two years' top 20 lists, KRIMZ predicted Peppe "⁠Peppzor⁠" Borak to reach the top level in the next few years. The 18-year-old was previously named by Golden on 'HLTV Confirmed' as one of Sweden's brightest up-and-coming players.

Peppe "⁠Peppzor⁠" Borak

"I'm going to go with Peppzor on this one. He's a very raw-talented player who's going to go the distance in this game. I think he will be the next Brollan or maybe even better."

Stay tuned to our Top 20 players of 2020 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:

Xtrfy - Built on experience
GG.BET - Online betting and odds on sport and esports