B1ad3 is a special coach. Not only did he coach s1mple to his first Major and somehow turn Boombl4 into a competent IGL in the process, he also guided them to a second years later with an entirely different team.

He’s also quite an enigma. A stern face with cold, meticulously crafted and detailed interview responses that never fail to put blame on the mistakes of his players without ever directly putting the blame on a specific individual.

Does that sound like anyone to you? Anyone from the footballing word perhaps?

We imagine at this point you’re thinking of Jose Mourinho, and that’s fair enough, because we thought that too… and then we realised how wrong it was.

B1ad3 might be special, but he isn’t Jose, he’s just too fun for that. Instead, zonic is something far more close to Jose: he won a lot by playing with an incredibly boring style and is now building one of the oldest, most boring teams imaginale and will still somehow bore his way to being the sixth best team in the world.

Well, maybe, Falcons are still quite bad. But you get the point.

So that begs the question: who actually is B1ad3’s footballing equivalent?

The next logical option is Jurgen Klopp. Klopp is a tactical mastermind who guided Liverpool at their first ever Premier League trophy, an achievement very similar to that of B1ad3 when he won the PGL Major Stockholm after three previous second place finishes. 

It’s a comparison that fits, but it’s also not whole. Klopp’s tactics are not only genius, but also revolutionary within their era. The high pressing and controlled form of chaos is beautiful, but that also means there is a much easier equivalent to find in CS with cadiaN’s HEROIC team. It’s just a shame that they never managed to win that coveted IEM event or a Major.

That brings us to our third and final option, a man who simply by comparing B1ad3 to him will also raise a very interesting question, and that’s Sir Alex Ferguson.

Sir Alex Ferguson is a man regarded for always managing to get the best out of players who, when compared to other stars around them, aren’t actually as good as they opposition they are facing. We really like the current NAVI, but they do tick that box if you put them next to the likes of G2 with m0NESY, Vitality with ZywOo, and Spirit with sh1ro and donk.

He’s also regarded for at one point buying a lot of talent (Let’s say in this case, Boombl4 and Perfecto) in order to win, and then managing to do it again after losing the talent for whatever reason later down the line. Tick, again.

Oh, and B1ad3 even had his own Cristiano Ronaldo in s1mple. We can even go further and once again bring up B1ad3’s success with the current NAVI after losing his Ronaldo. Double tick.

So there we have it, B1ad3 is Sir Alex Ferguson, not Jose Mourinho. But what about the interesting question that raises?

For many people, Pep Guardiola is the greatest manager of all time, and that’s fair, but only if you actually hate the idea of football being somewhat entertaining and ignore questionable coincidences surrounding the usage of certain doctors based in certain Spanish cities. For real intellectuals, the greatest manager will likely always be Sir Alex.

With that said, f B1ad3 is Counter-Strike’s Ferguson and Ferguson is the greatest manager of all time, does that make B1ad3 the greatest coach of all time? Well, maybe, and at this point it’s probably as close to a debate between zonic and B1ad3 as it is with Pep and Ferguson. 

Or, at least, if it isn’t now, it certainly will be if NAVI continue on the path they’re currently treading.