karrigan

The early life of Karrigan

Finn Andersen, often known as Karrigan, is a professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player from Denmark and the captain of the FaZe Clan. He was born on April 14, 1990. Around 2001, Karrigan's brother began playing Counter-Strike, and not long after that, he was also introduced to the game. By 2006 and 2007, Karrigan had already been competing, and on November 5, 2010, he joined Full-Gaming, a squad that also featured Timm "ArcadioN" Henriksen and Michael "Friis" Jørgensen. He graduated from Copenhagen Business School in 2015 with a dual master's degree in business administration and auditing. Now that Karrigan had his degree, he could start focusing on expanding his potential in CS:GO. He found the role as an in-game leader truly inspiring, as he loved the way you could outsmart your opponents with the right strats. Astralis, mousesports, Team SoloMid, fnatic, Team Dignitas, and Team Envy are just a few of the other teams Karrigan has played for. The Dane was a founding member of the 2015-founded, player-owned organization known as Astralis. He started playing Counter-Strike 1.6 competitively in 2006.

The career of Karrigan 

Around March 25, 2012, Karrigan joined fnatic, and the squad went on to win a lot of competitions. He joined mousesports when Counter-Strike: Global Offensive came out because "the offer they provided was incredibly fantastic," and he believed that the fnatic roster lacked the skills necessary to be successful in the new game. A year after his first stint with fnatic, he joined them again before bouncing around 3 teams. Karrigan finally found the team he wanted to play for, Copenhagen Wolves. Together with other Danish upcoming talents, Karrigan wanted to get to the top of the CS:GO scene. Together with Dupreeh, Xyp9x, and device, Karrigan had found the teammates that wanted to win as much as he did, and that also could do so. They stuck together through different organizations and different rosters. After Copenhagen Wolves, the team was picked up by Team Dignitas, a well-known org at the time in CS:GO. Not so long after, Team SoloMid picked up the roster, as the huge organization saw the potential in the squad led by Karrigan as their in-game leader. 

The team did well and got some good results in tournaments, but the time with the North American org came to an end earlier than expected. The troubles with the players being located in Denmark, and being a North American organization, was too hard to find their way through, so the roster got dropped. The big question now was “which team is going to pick up the roster?” For a month the roster played as Team Questionmark, while they waited for an opportunity. The opportunity finally came not so long after, but it was not what people expected. Astralis was formed by the players, as they wanted to play under a Danish roster, and therefore they founded Astralis. The team started well together as they placed 3rd at their first Major tournament together. 

It was a good start for the new team, but already at the next Major, things didn't go as good, as the team only placed 5th-8th. A string of poor results lead Karrigan and Astralis to take action, which meant that Karrigan got benched due to bad performances by the team. Karrigan looked for a new team, and the new team ended up being FaZe who picked the Danish IGL as their new in-game leader. With FaZe, Karrigan began to shine for real, as he outsmarted his opponents more now than ever. FaZe looked like a place for Karrigan to finally win his first Major. After 2 Majors with bad results for FaZe as well, Karrigan was eager to win the Major for the first time. Finally, his team got to the final and were huge favorites against Cloud 9 at the ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018. But the team couldn’t perform as expected as they lost the final 1-2 in a huge upset. 

After 2 years at FaZe, Karrigan left for mouseports. A new start for a new team was needed for karrigan and he was ready to improve his knowledge and hunt for a Major title. The team showed good results and won several S-tier tournaments, but failed to turn their good results into a Major win. After 1,5 years at mousesports, karrigan returned to FaZe in the hunt for his first Major title. 

In his long career of being a professional Counter-Strike player, karrigan finally won his first Major title at the PGL Major Antwerp 2022 beating Navi 2-0 in the final in Belgium. The whole Counter-Strike community was happy for karrigan as he is one of the legends of the game. Now karrigan and FaZe look to build on the win and try to win the next one. Only time will tell if they can. 

- Born to a German mother and Danish father. 

- In 2015, he finished a dual Master’s Degree in Business Administration and Auditing from Copenhagen Business School. 

- Oldest Major winner, winning PGL Major Antwerp 2022 at 32 years and 42 days old. The Danish in-game leader dethroned Zeus at the former oldest Major winner, who won PGL Major Kraków 2017 at 29 years and 289 days old. 

- Was ranked the 8th best player of 2011 by HLTV. 

- Was named the MVP of Electronic Sports World Cup 2011: Counter-Strike by HLTV. 

- Was named the MVP of FACEIT League 2015 Stage I Finals by HLTV.