Every other Nordic country has had to live in the shadow of Swedish CS' continued excellence throughout the lifespan of Counter-Strike, but at different teams all the other countries have battled for position as the second best Scandinavian country. Finland may have suffered its share of prejudice from the Swedish scene, with frequent complaints that players were online superstars or outright cheaters, but the Finns have had moments in history when they occupied that spot as the second best of the Scandinavians and made their own impact on the international scene.
With teams like
Clan Z, D-Sky and hoorai/69N-28E/roccat/GamePlay the Finns have been able to compete against any country's best teams for international titles. With sides like exousia, Ewok/Ocrana.fi, astralis, logitech.fi, Power Gaming and WinFakt the Finnish flag had been planted following many an upset over some of Europe's better teams. In this piece join me in celebrating the finest players Finland has had to offer, as I give you my top 10 Finnish CS players of all time.
In this first part we'll count down numbers 10 to 6, with the other five coming in part two in a couple of days.
Honourable mentions
With the framework of the feature meaning I can only name 10 players I don't want it to appear that I'm trying to back out of my picks with this preliminary section honouring those who missed the cut, rather I specifically included this section to highlight which names came close to being included and why they weren't.
For Finnish CS I have only three additional names to mention: biggs, diGitaL and Kuppi. biggs and Kuppi were both among the very best Finnish players of their eras, their problem as far as this list goes is that they didn't play on the pro level for long enough and their teams didn't accomplish much during their peaks. Kuppi in particular is a player I consider one of the most underrated of all time, very few seem to know just how good he was, but he can't compete with the names ahead of him on this list.
diGitaL was the other Finn outside of mysse, natu and lurppis to make a name for himself outside of Finland's borders. He played for xP.se and fnatic but any significant success. His best period came as the final piece added to the D-Sky team of 2004, playing a role in helping them to their successful run.
10. Marko "zet0r" Tikkanen
Biggest accomplishments: 1st at ClanBase EuroCup III, 2nd at ClanBase EuroCup V and 7th-8th at CPL Oslo
There was a time, 2001 to be precise, when zet0r was not only the best Finnish player but also one of the top 10 individual players in the world. That's not only significant as a feat which would not be accomplished again until half a decade later, when ruuit rose to prominence, but also as a moment in Finnish CS history when their scene's reputation of having legitimately elite players began to be re-established. zet0r was the player who brought Finnish CS back out of the dark age and into the light.
In December of 2000 Clan Z had won both the first CS EuroCup and CPL Cologne with victories in both finals over 
SoA. The problem was that the former was contested online, with many of the players on both teams sporting pings equal to or greater than 50, and the latter was marred by the discovery that Clan Z had brought their own modified configs, containing illegal commands. As a result all Finnish CS players were painted with the same brush of being only good online and/or potential cheaters.
In those early years Finland, along with other Nordic countries, were right up there with Sweden in terms of talent, yet those incidents meant the top Swedish players could look down their noses at the top Finns. This was still the case even with some of zet0r's team-mates, such as Yak. In zet0r though there was a player who could garner the respect of the top players around Europe, including the Swedes of 
NiP. As a player known both for his rifling and AWPing zet0r helped exousia, a.k.a. apostrophe and aNc.fi, to the ClanBase EuroCup III title, the first held on LAN. Later he powered the Ocrana.fi lineup which upset vesslan's star-studded experimental esu lineup at CPL Oslo and claimed 7th-8th overall.
zet0r's prime was short, comparative to the other names on this list, at around two years (from 2001-2002) but during that time he shined by far the brightest of his countrymen and was a key figure in ensuring Finnish CS wasn't written off as a joke by their Nordic neighbours.
9. Markus "tico" Kivipuro
Biggest accomplishments: 7th-8th at CPL Oslo, 4th at MindTrekLAN 2002, 4th at ClanBase EuroCup VI, 1st at Intel Cybersports Cup 2004, 2nd at Euskal CPL qualifier 2004, 4th at CPL Summer 2004 and 1st at EOGC
Try to name Finnish in-game leaders and you'll be scratching your head once you get past the first and most obvious choice: lurppis. There is another name who bears mentioning though, and that is tico. From his time in Mad Smurf Division (MSD) and Ewok/Ocrana.fi tico had established himself as one of the best players in Finland, but it was as the in-game leader of Destination Skyline (D-Sky) that he really showed what he could do.
Leading the first Finnish team to really "get it" in terms of understanding how to structure a team's roles and play with proper tactics tico played his part in helping to change the culture of how teams competed in Finland. As a thinker tico managed to come up with good ideas for how to do things and the team operated to their natural strengths but within a viable framework. Having played alongside alfa and coali in MSD tico knew how to use these players and their teamplay was very much the base from which D-Sky's success and consistency was built.
As a player tico was also one of the team's best players, his in-game style and personality running counter to his external appearance, a short stature and youthful looks making him appear permanently 14. Disappearing from the team to make way for Guardian in late 2004 tico is largely forgotten now but was well known as one of Finland's finest during his era.
8. Antti "mysse" Larte
Biggest accomplishments: 3rd at WCG 2001 and 2nd at CPL Winter 2002
In the early days of CS Sweden ruled the roost to the extent that it took some really unusual circumstances for a top Swedish LAN team to even consider recruiting a non-Swede into their lineup. In other words you had to be really good and to the extent that your play overcame the convenience of recruiting another Sweden, from what was the best talent pool in the world at the time. It's important people always consider that context when they think of names like
XeqtR, elemeNt and the player I am now going to speak about: mysse. This was quite literally a player so good that a top three Swedish team had to have him in their lineup.
While he had made his name winning a bronze medal with All* at the inaugural WCG in South Korea mysse was one of the few Swedes who didn't carry any of the stigma attached to Finnish CS of being online only players. Where Clan Z's secret config scandal lived on infamy mysse could not have been more polar opposite, here was a player who didn't even have a config and would just play with the default config on tournament machines. His idea of tweaking his settings was literally to go into the gui menu and pick "use default settings". For a player like mysse config commands or online confidence was not a factor, he was a LAN player and a damn good one at that.
After a spell in GoL (GameonLine) in early 2001 mysse is perhaps best known for being the Finnish member of the GoL lineup of late 2002 which seemingly represented the whole Nordic region: being made up of two Swedes, a Dane, a Norwegian and a Finn. In one of the most turbulant periods of CS history at the top, with lineups changing every couple of weeks, mysse's GoL came into CPL Winter 2002 with only a couple of weeks of practice and the language barrier of being forced to communicate in English. They also, it would emerge, had just the right mix of players to overcome both of those potential setbacks and rode a hot streak through to a runnersup finish.
With what was one of the true all-star lineups you really could run down the list of all of the players and expound upon the brilliant contribution of each member but one could certainly not overlook mysse's contribution. Where top Finnish players, even including some of the names on this list, sometimes had a defeatist attitude and felt like losing to the Swedes was a seeming inevitability mysse was a player who exuded confidence and it showed in his play. This was a player who, assuming he had a good team, really did feel like any game was up for grabs. During what was one of the lowest periods of time in Finnish history, in terms of international LAN success, mysse was flying the flag, albeit not for a Finnish team, and showing that Finland was capable of producing her own share of top LAN players.
7. Niko "coali" Nilsson
Biggest accomplishments: 1st at Intel Cybersports Cup 2004, 2nd at Euskal CPL qualifier 2004, 4th at CPL Summer 2004 and 1st at EOGC
After Clan Z's CPL win had been largely discredited there was a period of around three years where Finnish teams had not been capable of contending for international titles. apostrophe/aNc.fi/exousia had won EuroCup III but the best Swedish players had left the tournament before the semi-finals to reform NiP. Then Ewok/Ocrana.fi had helped show that Finnish teams were capable of performing on LAN, but still they weren't up to the level of the teams actually contending for the titles. That all changed in 2004 when D-Sky (Destination-Skyline) emerged as a force amongst the Nordic teams.
From humble beginnings as LiQuid ice they changed lineups until the team found the lineup which would place 4th at CPL Summer 2004. Throughout the year D-Sky travelled to different tournaments and established a level of consistent play on LAN which had never been seen in a Finnish team to that point in time. Their best player during that year was coali, a player who had been largely unknown internationally until then but who had a breakout year.
Carrying the torch from zet0r, which would later be passed to ruuit, coali was a rifle player with top notch spray control, capable of taking down multiple top opponents in a single sequence. In a team which incorporated tactics and teamplay to much greater degree than any past Finnish teams coali was the man who was depended upon to put big numbers on the scoreboard match in and match out. He did just that and helped his team to a number of top 3 placings across LAN tournaments of varying size and prestige that year, helping his team win more prize money than any Finnish team had ever amased during that kind of time span before.
coali's prime only lasted for a single year and some unfortunate transfer decisions from his team, sending out servicable LAN players in exchange for astralis whizz-kids who proved to be much less effective at big LANs, meant the drop-off at the end was fairly quick. With his decision to take his military service coali was never the same player when he returned, a trend which has haunted Finnish CS in almost every single case of a player departing for their service. Still, for that single year he was the best Finnish player on the best Finnish team ever to that point in time, and one which was legitimately good at teamplay and tactics.
Finnish CS had always been painted as guys drinking beer playing ClanBase mixes on dust2 and just rushing nonstop every T side, but here was a team who made themselves a top team by the same standards as the best sides from their neighbouring Nordic countries. That foundation was based upon the play of coali.
6. Joona "natu" Leppanen
Biggest accomplishments: 3rd at WCG 2001, 4th at CPL Summer 2004, 8th at CPL Winter 2005, 4th at WSVG ISC 2006, 1st at NGL-One S2 and 1st at WSVG Louisville
1st at Intel Cybersports Cup 2004, 2nd at Euskal CPL qualifier 2004, 4th at CPL Summer 2004 and 1st at EOGC
If you're looking to describe the vast majority of top Finnish players in CS history then you could easily generalise by saying they were wary of non-Finns, lacked confidence in speaking English and had an apathetic approach to playing CS. Along with mysse, natu was one of the players to defy those conventions. Looking back if I was pick to a player from the Finnish talent pool who would be capable of remaining in the competitive scene for a decade natu would have been my pick.
Firstly he shared former team-mate mysse's reputation of being known as a LAN player and secondly he was sociable to the extent he easily made friends with non-Finnish players, a key requiste if you want to play in international teams at any point in your career. As a result it's no surprise he was able to follow in his friend's footsteps and play for teams from Denmark, Greece and the UK. natu's secret throughout his career has been that he has gotten along with everyone in his teams on a man-to-man basis, making him the glue which held those lineups together.
In terms of his game natu was always a top three player for his teams over most of his career. While modern day fans may remember him doing veteran roles for 69N-28E/roccat/PowerGaming, winning clutch rounds and filling in the holes here and there, the first two thirds or so of his career was actually spent as one of the fraggers of his teams. Though never a star player natu was a classic "middleman", playing the role of third fragger and go-between for certain positions. He had good communication and teamplay for a Finnish player, rotating well and being capable of playing out multiple types of situations.
Until his later years, when his motivation to practice was almost nill, there was never a lineup which would have cut natu, he was one of the steadfast rocks of all of them. When considering his success and accomplishments it's always important to remember the context I mentioned before: that he was not the star player on his teams. Instead he was a motivated player who made a career out of playing a particular brand of CS and was then able to modify his game to contine in his later years, giving him by far the most longevity of any CS player in history.
If CGS had not come along I think Rambo would have beaten his record, but since we'll never know natu sits alone as someone who legitimately played at or around the top end of competitive CS from 2001 to 2010. It's great to burn brightly for a year or two, or to grab some top placings over a specific period of time, but there's something to be said for consistency and the ability to keep going for years at a time. The latter is not something which can be done by just any professional player, that's why they all quit and give up eventually. natu managed a decade and, along with his unique accomplishments, established himself as one of the all time great Finnish players as a result.
Well, there you have it: the bottom five of my top 10 Finnish CS players of all time. Who do you think made it into my top 5? More importantly, who have I put at the top spot? Who would be in your top 10 and where in the ranking?
Numbers 6-1 of my top 10 will be published in a couple of days.
With teams like
Clan Z, D-Sky and hoorai/69N-28E/roccat/GamePlay the Finns have been able to compete against any country's best teams for international titles. With sides like exousia, Ewok/Ocrana.fi, astralis, logitech.fi, Power Gaming and WinFakt the Finnish flag had been planted following many an upset over some of Europe's better teams. In this piece join me in celebrating the finest players Finland has had to offer, as I give you my top 10 Finnish CS players of all time.In this first part we'll count down numbers 10 to 6, with the other five coming in part two in a couple of days.
Honourable mentions
With the framework of the feature meaning I can only name 10 players I don't want it to appear that I'm trying to back out of my picks with this preliminary section honouring those who missed the cut, rather I specifically included this section to highlight which names came close to being included and why they weren't.
For Finnish CS I have only three additional names to mention: biggs, diGitaL and Kuppi.
biggs and Kuppi were both among the very best Finnish players of their eras, their problem as far as this list goes is that they didn't play on the pro level for long enough and their teams didn't accomplish much during their peaks. Kuppi in particular is a player I consider one of the most underrated of all time, very few seem to know just how good he was, but he can't compete with the names ahead of him on this list. diGitaL was the other Finn outside of mysse, natu and lurppis to make a name for himself outside of Finland's borders. He played for xP.se and fnatic but any significant success. His best period came as the final piece added to the D-Sky team of 2004, playing a role in helping them to their successful run.10.
Marko "zet0r" TikkanenBiggest accomplishments: 1st at ClanBase EuroCup III, 2nd at ClanBase EuroCup V and 7th-8th at CPL Oslo
There was a time, 2001 to be precise, when zet0r was not only the best Finnish player but also one of the top 10 individual players in the world. That's not only significant as a feat which would not be accomplished again until half a decade later, when ruuit rose to prominence, but also as a moment in Finnish CS history when their scene's reputation of having legitimately elite players began to be re-established. zet0r was the player who brought Finnish CS back out of the dark age and into the light.In December of 2000
Clan Z had won both the first CS EuroCup and CPL Cologne with victories in both finals over SoA. The problem was that the former was contested online, with many of the players on both teams sporting pings equal to or greater than 50, and the latter was marred by the discovery that Clan Z had brought their own modified configs, containing illegal commands. As a result all Finnish CS players were painted with the same brush of being only good online and/or potential cheaters. In those early years Finland, along with other Nordic countries, were right up there with Sweden in terms of talent, yet those incidents meant the top Swedish players could look down their noses at the top Finns. This was still the case even with some of zet0r's team-mates, such as Yak. In zet0r though there was a player who could garner the respect of the top players around Europe, including the Swedes of NiP. As a player known both for his rifling and AWPing zet0r helped exousia, a.k.a. apostrophe and aNc.fi, to the ClanBase EuroCup III title, the first held on LAN. Later he powered the Ocrana.fi lineup which upset vesslan's star-studded experimental esu lineup at CPL Oslo and claimed 7th-8th overall.zet0r's prime was short, comparative to the other names on this list, at around two years (from 2001-2002) but during that time he shined by far the brightest of his countrymen and was a key figure in ensuring Finnish CS wasn't written off as a joke by their Nordic neighbours.
9.
Markus "tico" KivipuroBiggest accomplishments: 7th-8th at CPL Oslo, 4th at MindTrekLAN 2002, 4th at ClanBase EuroCup VI, 1st at Intel Cybersports Cup 2004, 2nd at Euskal CPL qualifier 2004, 4th at CPL Summer 2004 and 1st at EOGC
Try to name Finnish in-game leaders and you'll be scratching your head once you get past the first and most obvious choice: lurppis. There is another name who bears mentioning though, and that is tico. From his time in
Mad Smurf Division (MSD) and Ewok/Ocrana.fi tico had established himself as one of the best players in Finland, but it was as the in-game leader of Destination Skyline (D-Sky) that he really showed what he could do.Leading the first Finnish team to really "get it" in terms of understanding how to structure a team's roles and play with proper tactics tico played his part in helping to change the culture of how teams competed in Finland. As a thinker tico managed to come up with good ideas for how to do things and the team operated to their natural strengths but within a viable framework. Having played alongside alfa and coali in MSD tico knew how to use these players and their teamplay was very much the base from which D-Sky's success and consistency was built.As a player tico was also one of the team's best players, his in-game style and personality running counter to his external appearance, a short stature and youthful looks making him appear permanently 14. Disappearing from the team to make way for Guardian in late 2004 tico is largely forgotten now but was well known as one of Finland's finest during his era.
8.
Antti "mysse" LarteBiggest accomplishments: 3rd at WCG 2001 and 2nd at CPL Winter 2002
In the early days of CS Sweden ruled the roost to the extent that it took some really unusual circumstances for a top Swedish LAN team to even consider recruiting a non-Swede into their lineup. In other words you had to be really good and to the extent that your play overcame the convenience of recruiting another Sweden, from what was the best talent pool in the world at the time. It's important people always consider that context when they think of names like
XeqtR, elemeNt and the player I am now going to speak about: mysse. This was quite literally a player so good that a top three Swedish team had to have him in their lineup.While he had made his name winning a bronze medal with All* at the inaugural WCG in South Korea mysse was one of the few Swedes who didn't carry any of the stigma attached to Finnish CS of being online only players. Where Clan Z's secret config scandal lived on infamy mysse could not have been more polar opposite, here was a player who didn't even have a config and would just play with the default config on tournament machines. His idea of tweaking his settings was literally to go into the gui menu and pick "use default settings". For a player like mysse config commands or online confidence was not a factor, he was a LAN player and a damn good one at that.After a spell in
GoL (GameonLine) in early 2001 mysse is perhaps best known for being the Finnish member of the GoL lineup of late 2002 which seemingly represented the whole Nordic region: being made up of two Swedes, a Dane, a Norwegian and a Finn. In one of the most turbulant periods of CS history at the top, with lineups changing every couple of weeks, mysse's GoL came into CPL Winter 2002 with only a couple of weeks of practice and the language barrier of being forced to communicate in English. They also, it would emerge, had just the right mix of players to overcome both of those potential setbacks and rode a hot streak through to a runnersup finish.With what was one of the true all-star lineups you really could run down the list of all of the players and expound upon the brilliant contribution of each member but one could certainly not overlook mysse's contribution. Where top Finnish players, even including some of the names on this list, sometimes had a defeatist attitude and felt like losing to the Swedes was a seeming inevitability mysse was a player who exuded confidence and it showed in his play. This was a player who, assuming he had a good team, really did feel like any game was up for grabs. During what was one of the lowest periods of time in Finnish history, in terms of international LAN success, mysse was flying the flag, albeit not for a Finnish team, and showing that Finland was capable of producing her own share of top LAN players.7.
Niko "coali" NilssonBiggest accomplishments: 1st at Intel Cybersports Cup 2004, 2nd at Euskal CPL qualifier 2004, 4th at CPL Summer 2004 and 1st at EOGC
After Clan Z's CPL win had been largely discredited there was a period of around three years where Finnish teams had not been capable of contending for international titles. apostrophe/aNc.fi/exousia had won EuroCup III but the best Swedish players had left the tournament before the semi-finals to reform NiP. Then Ewok/Ocrana.fi had helped show that Finnish teams were capable of performing on LAN, but still they weren't up to the level of the teams actually contending for the titles. That all changed in 2004 when D-Sky (Destination-Skyline) emerged as a force amongst the Nordic teams.
From humble beginnings as LiQuid ice they changed lineups until the team found the lineup which would place 4th at CPL Summer 2004. Throughout the year D-Sky travelled to different tournaments and established a level of consistent play on LAN which had never been seen in a Finnish team to that point in time. Their best player during that year was coali, a player who had been largely unknown internationally until then but who had a breakout year.
Carrying the torch from zet0r, which would later be passed to ruuit, coali was a rifle player with top notch spray control, capable of taking down multiple top opponents in a single sequence. In a team which incorporated tactics and teamplay to much greater degree than any past Finnish teams coali was the man who was depended upon to put big numbers on the scoreboard match in and match out. He did just that and helped his team to a number of top 3 placings across LAN tournaments of varying size and prestige that year, helping his team win more prize money than any Finnish team had ever amased during that kind of time span before.coali's prime only lasted for a single year and some unfortunate transfer decisions from his team, sending out servicable LAN players in exchange for astralis whizz-kids who proved to be much less effective at big LANs, meant the drop-off at the end was fairly quick. With his decision to take his military service coali was never the same player when he returned, a trend which has haunted Finnish CS in almost every single case of a player departing for their service. Still, for that single year he was the best Finnish player on the best Finnish team ever to that point in time, and one which was legitimately good at teamplay and tactics.
Finnish CS had always been painted as guys drinking beer playing ClanBase mixes on dust2 and just rushing nonstop every T side, but here was a team who made themselves a top team by the same standards as the best sides from their neighbouring Nordic countries. That foundation was based upon the play of coali.
6.
Joona "natu" LeppanenBiggest accomplishments: 3rd at WCG 2001, 4th at CPL Summer 2004, 8th at CPL Winter 2005, 4th at WSVG ISC 2006, 1st at NGL-One S2 and 1st at WSVG Louisville
1st at Intel Cybersports Cup 2004, 2nd at Euskal CPL qualifier 2004, 4th at CPL Summer 2004 and 1st at EOGC
If you're looking to describe the vast majority of top Finnish players in CS history then you could easily generalise by saying they were wary of non-Finns, lacked confidence in speaking English and had an apathetic approach to playing CS. Along with mysse, natu was one of the players to defy those conventions. Looking back if I was pick to a player from the Finnish talent pool who would be capable of remaining in the competitive scene for a decade natu would have been my pick.
Firstly he shared former team-mate mysse's reputation of being known as a LAN player and secondly he was sociable to the extent he easily made friends with non-Finnish players, a key requiste if you want to play in international teams at any point in your career. As a result it's no surprise he was able to follow in his friend's footsteps and play for teams from Denmark, Greece and the UK. natu's secret throughout his career has been that he has gotten along with everyone in his teams on a man-to-man basis, making him the glue which held those lineups together.In terms of his game natu was always a top three player for his teams over most of his career. While modern day fans may remember him doing veteran roles for 69N-28E/roccat/PowerGaming, winning clutch rounds and filling in the holes here and there, the first two thirds or so of his career was actually spent as one of the fraggers of his teams. Though never a star player natu was a classic "middleman", playing the role of third fragger and go-between for certain positions. He had good communication and teamplay for a Finnish player, rotating well and being capable of playing out multiple types of situations.
Until his later years, when his motivation to practice was almost nill, there was never a lineup which would have cut natu, he was one of the steadfast rocks of all of them. When considering his success and accomplishments it's always important to remember the context I mentioned before: that he was not the star player on his teams. Instead he was a motivated player who made a career out of playing a particular brand of CS and was then able to modify his game to contine in his later years, giving him by far the most longevity of any CS player in history.
If CGS had not come along I think Rambo would have beaten his record, but since we'll never know natu sits alone as someone who legitimately played at or around the top end of competitive CS from 2001 to 2010. It's great to burn brightly for a year or two, or to grab some top placings over a specific period of time, but there's something to be said for consistency and the ability to keep going for years at a time. The latter is not something which can be done by just any professional player, that's why they all quit and give up eventually. natu managed a decade and, along with his unique accomplishments, established himself as one of the all time great Finnish players as a result.Well, there you have it: the bottom five of my top 10 Finnish CS players of all time. Who do you think made it into my top 5? More importantly, who have I put at the top spot? Who would be in your top 10 and where in the ranking?
Numbers 6-1 of my top 10 will be published in a couple of days.
