Everyone is back home and recharging the batteries after a November full of traveling. For the Counter-Strike team, the so-called “Sweden tour” was filled with action.

 

After a fall season of steady decline for the Counter-Strike crew with poor results at LAN events in Romania and the United States, it was time to get back on the horse for real and climb back on the global ranking. Having fallen down to a heartbreaking 125th in the world (Metizport was ranked 28th in April), and with L00m1, Plopski and Head Coach abdi getting moved away from the active roster, there was an imminent grimness over the CS department. 

 

However, knowing how the VRS-ranking works, we were sure that a rather quick ascend was possible if we could only climb up a few rungs on the ladder in upcoming LAN events. With November already showing many promising signs of being a busy season for Counter-Strike, and with three LAN events confirmed that Metizport were able to secure spots in, we decided to name the upcoming skirmish “the Sweden tour”.

 

 

With Valve’s new ranking system, offline events have skyrocketed in value. While playing online tournaments matter as well, winning a match in an offline event gives you a lot more points. At the end of October Metizport sat on just one recorded LAN victory (against Johnny Speeds at Glitched Masters 2025 in June this year), so the team was in dire need to fill up the list of ten up-to-date LAN wins necessary to build a much stronger foundation for the overall ranking. Because of the VRS-system and the interest for offline events, tournament organizers all over Europe see the potential in hosting events, and so for Metizport, it was only a matter of picking the most fitting for us.

 

With the majority of our players being Swedish, it was only fair to look for nationwide tournaments first and foremost. In the end, the ball landed on JOURNEY 2025 in Åre, Svenska Cupen 2025 (which Metizport was directly invited to) and lastly DreamHack Knockout Stockholm 2025, all in November. These three events were more than enough for us to receive a significant boost on the global ranking, as long as we performed!

 

And despite a very new roster with only a few weeks practice together, the squad played their hearts out at the first tournament – JOURNEY 2025 in the mountains of Northern Sweden – finishing top 8 after losing to the highest ranked team in the tournament in the quarterfinals. Still, In-game leader Jackinho showed great resilience together with his team despite limited practice, mounting several comebacks in matches that at first glance seemed to have slipped out of their hands, walking away with four LAN victories totaling ~188 points. This immediately boosted Metizport’s position from 125th to around 100th globally.

 

 

There was no time to waste though – after the event in Åre the squad took the train back to Stockholm, where they made do of the small gap until the next tournament – Svenska Cupen 2025 – by stopping by Red Bull Gaming Sphere for a two-day bootcamp to fix the holes having become apparent in the previous tournament. Svenska Cupen 2025, the “Swedish Championships” of Counter-Strike, is a very important tournament for Metizport’s legacy since we became Champions in 2024. 2025’s edition was equally as hyped, but with Metizport now only being the fifth highest ranked team in Sweden, the tables had somewhat turned. Svenska Cupen had eight teams, offered a prize pool of 300,000 SEK (~$31,719) and another chance to climb on the ranking by “upsetting” the higher ranked teams in the tournament.

 

New Head Coach Vincent “vinS” Jozefiak saw his men face a rough start in the opening match versus the mix team “megoshort”, but in the end Metizport were able to run off with a 13-11 victory. In the Winner’s match they faced Alliance and lost 0-2, but both maps were incredibly close – 14-16 and 12-16. In the Decider match the following day “megoshort” were looking for revenge but were unable to find it, with vinS’s collectedness leading his crew to a 2-0 victory, punching in their ticket to the semifinals the next day in front of a live audience. 

 

At this point Metizport had already gained another two LAN wins and ~94 points, but they wanted more. The opponents in the semifinals, Johnny Speeds, were 30-or-so spots higher than us on the global ranking, which meant a win against them would award extra points. With great performances from Isak “isak” Fahlén and our new AWPer Tim “nawwk” Jonasson, Metizport swept the opponents aside with ease in two maps and were – just like that – ready for the Grand Finals yet another year.

 

 

In the Grand Finals Alliance waited. It was the perfect opportunity for revenge for Metizport’s Captain Jackinho, which he highlighted himself in the winner’s interview after the feat versus Johnny Speeds. Alliance, however, proved to be the stronger team and dismantled us slowly but surely, claiming the title as Sweden’s best team after winning 3-0. It’s safe to say, however, that we were all proud of the team after such a performance either way. We became gold medalists in 2024, and now we stood as silver medalists in 2025 – that’s definitely something to hang in the christmas tree!

 

After Svenska Cupen it was time for a short break at home for everyone in the team – roughly two weeks – before they headed out again to Stockholm for a final time. It was time to attend DreamHack Knockout Stockholm 2025, a $10,000 tournament taking place inside the DreamHack festival, which also held a qualifying spot to ESL Pro League Season 23 next year. 

 

Metizport started off strong with a win in the group stage against BASEMENT BOYS, but in the following match versus 9INE they fell short only with a few rounds, the match slipping out of their hands and ending 0-2. At this point it was already quite late in the day, but a Decider match still awaited the team where BASEMENT boys waited again having managed to crawl their way back after the defeat earlier. Unfortunately, Metizport lost this 1-2 in the end and were eliminated from the tournament early. None of these matches counted towards the ranking, as the first stage of the tournament was not VRS-covered, so at the end of the day it had no effect on the ranking whatsoever. The boys took hold of the moment for the remaining days of the event, appearing in both the Lenovo- and AndaSeat booths at the festival to engage with the community and partake in other fun activities. 

 

 

As we’re now two days into December, everyone has returned home and a much calmer month awaits the team. It will be a time for evaluation of the past month and then preparation for an action-filled 2026, which will very likely be just as full of exciting events and opportunities to climb even higher on the ranking.

 

So how much did the “Sweden tour” do for our ranking? We climbed over 50 ranks globally in a month, now sitting at ~75 globally. It is a much better starting point for next year, when we’ll be looking at continuing our uprise as a new, fresh squad. 

 

We want to thank everyone for the support during these events. We saw you, we heard you, we felt your emotions, and you can be sure that it made an impact on us and the team. We hope to see you all again in 2026!