Esports Legends: NiKo

As he’ll see action during the upcoming IEM Katowice tournament, let’s take a look at one of CS:GO’s youngest legends, Nikola “Niko” Kovač.

It almost seems unbelievable, being regarded as one of the best CS:GO players in the world yet not having won a Major. Such is the case for the young but already Legendary player we are looking at today. Nikola ‘NiKo’ Kovač has, as a 23 year old, achieved more than most of his peers in many years and can already be seen as a Legend.

There are many Niko’s around in the professional CounterStrike scene, yet there is one to rule them all. Nikola ‘NiKo’ Kovač has been competing since his early teens and has been accredited a good placement in the HLTV top 20 players for five years straight. What makes this player great and what did his journey to success look like?

Growing locally

Despite being from Bosnia and Herzegovina himself, NiKo has been competing in the neighbouring country of Serbia from the start of his career. During the 1.6 era he played many LANs and actually did well at a lot of them. Finding a decent team, most likely mixed with people from a different nationality than that of himself, seemed imminent. 

He joined up with INation just before the jump was made towards CS:GO and qualified for DreamHack Bucharest 2012 with that team. They made it into 5th-8th place, which was quite amazing for a team that came in through qualifiers rather than being invited. NiKo kept on playing with the INation roster for the bigger part of 2013 only to progress towards Team Refuse in August. Coincidently he played with Janko ‘YNk’ Paunović, who would become his coach later on in his career at FaZe Clan. International titles would still be a distant dream, yet NiKo got more and more chances to show what he could do and eventually was picked up by Mousesports in 2015.

New team, big wins?

With joining a more established roster come more invites for bigger tournaments. NiKo was now able to play at higher tier events and actually was competing with the strong roster that was Mousesports at that time. Winning some online events and building more cohesion in the team, he was looking to get a big LAN win in for himself and his new organisation. 

His stay at Mousesports started with some wins at online tournaments and he was quick to qualify for DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca 2015, the first Major he would attend. Yet this tournament and some other international events did not yet yield a victory. CEVO Season 8 Professional resulted in a great second place though, losing out against Virtus Pro in a best-of-five. The performance with the Mousesports roster was inconsistent however, leaving NiKo without the big title he was longing for, despite being arguably the best player on the team for a long time.

Time to FaZe Up

This incredible performance of NiKo was noticed by many people and he was eventually bought out by FaZe Clan to play in yet another international roster. He was able to start strong and got second in the first event he played, and won the StarLadder i-League StarSeries Season 3 straight after. Top four finishes seemed to be the new normal for NiKo and his team, yet they were unable to show that at the first Major they played together. They were able to bounce back by contending for and actually winning some titles going forward to the next Major. Yet this turned into a big let-down after they lost in the Grand Final against Cloud 9 at the Boston Major in 2018.

FaZe was able to bring home more titles in the time after, yet halfway 2019 and onwards they grew more and more inconsistent. This was aggravated by the pandemic hitting in 2020. The lack of LAN events made their experience less valuable. Some good finishes and actual wins came throughout 2020, but NiKo was of course always an incredibly valuable asset for other teams to try and pick up. 

Kovač’s unite

In November 2020 G2 Esports, one of the wealthier organisations in the world, was able to buy NiKo from FaZe and bring him together with his cousin to compete in a slightly reformed roster. With G2 Esports trying to find out which players they wanted to keep to streamline the roster, some uncertain times and inconsistencies appeared at the start of NiKo’s time with the team. Yet the performance was quite good for the short time they have spent together. Wins are still some time away it seems though but anything can happen this year, as NiKo’s shown before.

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Image Credit: G2 Esports
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