Is NiKo to Falcons going to be the saddest transfer in esports history?

It looks like the nightmare roster move we’ve once avoided has returned, like a shambling, rotten corpse dug up for the sequel of a long-forgotten zombie movie. Reports suggest that second time’s the charm in the romantic relationship between Niko and the Saudi bag, and the Bosnian rifle will join Falcons after the Shanghai Major.

As a long-forgotten poet of Scotland once scribed: bleurgh.

NiKo and the rotten poultry

Like a gone-off chicken in an abandoned pantry, the NiKo-to-Falcons roster move is long past its due date, emanating a foul smell in all directions. Beyond all the usual angles a reasonable fan would dislike a high-profile coup for a sportswashing project – the unwanted intrusion of unsavory politics, the market-warping nature of the money thrown around, the moral turpitude of it all –, this one has an especially pungent odor.

First of all, he’s already rejected them once. It was a fun moment, and he was just one of many high-profile players who didn’t want to waste their prime years as part of this misadventure, with Twistzz notably going on record to voice what so many of us think about this project, saying “I don’t want to be affiliated with that stuff at all”. Niko changing his mind is, in many ways, worse than had he just said yes at the first time of asking. It’s a downgrade, a rot.

This is especially true because the Falcons are no longer an unknown quantity in CS matches. There is no mystery box here, just a rectangle of mediocrity. Merely throwing money at the esports problem has never been enough to succeed, and for that matter, it also isn’t an all-encompassing solution in traditional sports. No, you need a Guardiola and a Begiristain and a decade and 115 alleged financial breaches to make sportswashing work. Just ask PSG.

This also might be Niko’s last big move for all we know, at least as a star rifler – Father Time does have a tendency to chew away at players in this role faster than the rest. It would be a sad coda for an era in Counter-Strike. Besides, what would be worse, if he won stuff with Falcons, or if he didn’t? If his potential remained unfulfilled on the largest of stages – meaning the Major –, or if he helped this sportwashing project to the biggest title in the CS space?

There are no good outcomes.

G2’s quiet stability brought them very little

As a tangential discussion, it is also worth noting that G2 were remarkably stable in their roster construction over the past few years, basically behaving like a model org. This makes them a surprisingly effective test case for whether it’s worth giving time to cores and IGLs and if a struggling squad can come good over time.

The results are not looking that good, actually?

In many ways, the stability is remarkable. To start, huNter- has been on the team since October 2019, with NiKo joining the party a little more than a year later. To put this in perspective, they’ve been plying their trade on G2 for almost the equivalent of over a third of CS:GO’s lifespan. Meanwhile, m0NESY joined to round out the core in January 2022, itself nearing an eternity in esports. This trio is likely to remain as-is until the Shanghai Major, and even if NiKo does depart, the rest may very well stick around.

And yet, even with this core of perennial HLTV top 20 stalwarts, G2’s trophy cabinet isn’t quite what it could (or should) be. This is especially damning once you consider how, again, HooXi and jks were also given quite a lot of leeway – over a year’s worth of rope to hang themselves with, in fact.

But even if you go back further, players like AMANEK and JACKZ (and even nexa) have two- and three- and four-year-stints to their name, with honestly not that much to show for it.

With such a talented core and rarely-seen stability (remember when HooXi survived the team’s elimination from the Rio Major RMR?), both coveted elements in the world of sports, all the pieces in the puzzle were in place for success – at least what you would expect based on theory.

Practice, in this case, didn’t make perfect.