Historic downfall: NIP out of HLTV’s Top 20 for the only second time in history
The Legendary Organization has hit a joint all-time low on the world ranking.
It’s been a while since the Ninjas in Pyjamas were a dominating factor in CS:GO. The ESL One Cologne 2014 winners set their mark early on in the CS:GO era, but in the past years the results have been somewhat lackluster in comparison.
On the world ranking, however, NIP has been a top 20 team since the introduction of ranking in 2016. Only once in 2017, NIP was out of the top 20 for two weeks but has since then been featured among the best 20 teams in the world. Until yesterday.
On the latest update to the ranking, NIP dropped out of the top 20. Eternal Fire overtook the 20th place with just a single point.
The many changes to the lineup have contributed to the lack of points on the ranking, but the biggest factor is the early knockouts in ESL Pro League Season 17 (17-20th), and IEM Katowice (13-16th).
In the past year, NIP switched out phzy, Plopski, hampus, and es3tag from their lineup, while device was sold to Astralis back in October. Brollan, Aleksib, headtr1ck, and k0nfig have been added as replacements leaving REZ as the only player with more than a year on NIP’s roster.
hampus and es3tag are currently still under contract with NIP.
NIP will play their next match in the super-stacked BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 Europe Group B, where they face Eternal Fire in the opening round. NIP is the 10th highest-ranked team in the group, where eight spots for the Paris Major are up for grabs, while 9-11th will get another chance in the Last Chance Qualifier.
