KATOWICE, Poland -- FaZe Clan's Olof "olofmeister" Kajbjer Gustafsson still remembers the half-empty halls where Counter-Strike: Global Offensive major qualifying rounds used to take place.
"In the semifinal, we had like 500 people in the crowd," olofmeister said. "The final was in the Spodek arena, but that was the only game that was there. It's way, way different. There are so many more teams playing. Now, they're professional. Now, there's much more money everywhere. Everything is just more professional today."
The past couple years have been a grand departure from those first tournaments for the 27-year-old Swede. He's the only player to make it to the playoffs of every CS:GO major championship, from winning his first title four years ago with Fnatic at Katowice to this year's championship, the 14th major.
After failing to win another major championship in 2018 when North American side Cloud9 upset FaZe in front of a hometown crowd in Boston, this year brought another opportunity for one of the game's most consistent stars to add another bullet point to his hall of fame resume. And even though FaZe came into the event not expected to challenge for a title, the squad formerly regarded as the "European superteam" jumped out to a fast start over favored Natus Vincere in the quarterfinals by putting pressure on Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev and his team.
The fans were behind FaZe early on in the match, the filled Spodek arena chanting "FAZE UP!" each time the former giants of the scene took a round. Even s1mple, the best player in the world, was struggling to find his form early on in the series, falling behind in kills and unable to find room to work. Everything was working for FaZe until a few rounds slipped away, and just like that, s1mple locked in, and FaZe was left without a way to answer. Olofmeister, once seen as that untouchable superstar, had to watch as the new No. 1 in the game, the youngster from the Ukraine, put his team out of the tournament.
There would be not another dream-like ending in Poland for Olofmeister, at least this year.
"We're disappointed in the way we played," he said. "We thought we played really good during practice and did a lot of preparation, but somehow we didn't play the same way we did in practice. We didn't use what we did in practice, and it's a big disappointment."
Following the first two days of the competition in the Spodek, the field to crown the next CS:GO world champion has been narrowed down to four teams. Aside from Na'vi, there are the Finnish upstarts from ENCE and former major winners in MIBR and Astralis, the reigning world champion. Astralis seemed to be on a collision course with Team Liquid for months leading up to the event, but ENCE, as they've done all tournament, shut down a supposedly stronger opponent and eliminated the North Americans in a 2-0 sweep.
With Liquid out, Olofmeister believes MIBR might be the team best-positioned to knock out Astralis. That match will take place in the second semifinal at 1:50 p.m. ET on Saturday.
"MIBR, especially, has always played really, really close with them," Olofmeister said. "They seem better now that it's a full Brazilian roster and they can talk in their own [native language]."
Since Ninjas in Pyjamas' 87-0 map win streak in 2013, there has always been a question of which team in the game's history was the best. Olofmeister's Fnatic squad in 2014-2015 has an argument, winning two world titles along with various other tournament crowds during their reign. The next year, the core that now makes up MIBR took their turn atop the CS:GO world, first winning a world title under the Luminosity brand before becoming SK Gaming and defending their world title.
Two of the last four world titles have gone the way of Astralis, with the most-recent starting five putting themselves right there alongside the best to ever play the game. Team ace Nicolai "dev1ce" Reedtz has solidified himself as the most consistent superstar in the world and is putting up some of the best numbers of his career during the Katowice major.
If Astralis can repeat as champions, are they the best team of all-time? Olofmeister doesn't think so.
Win or lose, he already believes Astralis is a pantheon all to themselves.
"I would say already they're the best team in the world in the history of the game," he said. "That's where I rank them."