NiKo: "I feel like the most complete player in my career in this moment"

Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač feels he has reached his career-peak as a player, and is proud of it.

When all is said and done and we have moved on to CS2, NiKo may well go down as the greatest rifler CS:GO ever saw. Despite his immense talent and superlative ability, he hasn't always been able to win the trophies his individual level may have deserved.

In recent times G2 have managed to bulk out NiKo's resume with some impressive tournament wins, and now, having secured IEM Cologne to go with the Katowice trophy they won earlier in the year, the Bosnian rifler has added one more title to his cabinet.

Fresh from securing a trophy that eluded him for so long, NiKo sat down with HLTV to give his thoughts on the historic victory, his development as a player, and his opinions on his AWPer and IGL.

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NiKo named MVP of IEM Cologne

Just tell me how you’re feeling after winning that one?

Feeling amazing. Winning the last IEM Cologne in CS:GO is going to have a big place in my heart, I’m really happy that we managed to do this. It took me quite some time to win both Katowice and Cologne, and I’m happy it happened in the end.

Tell me a little bit about the journey from Katowice to here. Obviously you had the Major and things like that, how impressed are you that you managed to stick together and come through that period?

It hasn’t been easy. After the Paris Major we definitely were in a down period, and we all felt… no one was happy and satisfied obviously with the results, there’s no doubt, but I think we just have created a system that can win us the championships.

To be honest coming to this tournament, we did not come thinking we were going to go to the final and win in such a fashion, but we took it one game at a time and one round at a time, we just kept improving from each game. Every game was us doing better and better, building up the confidence, and being there for each other. By every game that we won we believed in ourselves even more, you believe in your teammate next to you.

I’m really proud of everyone in the team for this event, and I don’t care if we go to Riyad and lose in groups the next event, or even Pro League. Winning Katowice and Cologne is something that not many players have managed to achieve, in one year at least, so I’m happy for the whole team and really proud, including the whole staff behind us, not just the players. Everyone has put a lot of effort and work in, and yeah I’m happy that we are here today laughing and celebrating.

What about individually, as well? I think it’s your first HLTV LAN MVP for like 1300 days, something crazy, how much importance to you give to this MVP?

It’s been a long time since I managed to achieve this. It was just hard, ever since I joined G2 we had hard times against NAVI, s1mple was in his prime, so it was always hard to play versus them, but I never really thought about how to win an MVP, rather just how to win a trophy for the team, for the players, for the organization. That was the same today, the goal was just for me to help the team as much as I can, share my experience from the past that I have. I think that now I probably feel like the most complete player in my career in this moment, so I'm really happy and proud of myself for it. Winning an MVP is a great thing, but I'm just much more proud of myself, how I finally developed as a player.

Tell me a bit about how your role has developed. This aggressive rifler role is easy to be inconsistent in, how did you get into such a flow state this tournament? I think you had the same deaths-per-round as m0NESY, which in your role is crazy. Tell me about that.

It’s very tough, it’s hard for me to stay consistent in this role because a lot depends on the maps. On some maps I'm not in the position to shine, on some maps I have to sacrifice more, on some maps the team are playing more around me. It's hard to keep up the same numbers right now, but I think that I kinda mastered my role, mastered the positions that I am playing in. Obviously there is always room for improvement, but I'm now just really happy with how consistent I am as a player as well. The past six-seven months haven’t been that good for me, so I just started thinking about improvements, how I can be a better player and teammate.

This season at least, or the last two events, I am definitely doing much better, I feel much better individually. I think that mostly comes from my calmness, I think I am very calm right now and probably that’s why I have maybe less deaths, I don’t try to force things sometimes, I am just taking it a bit more… passive maybe, sometimes if I got two or three kills I would go for four, but now I rather maybe sit back, chill a bit, breathe. I think that's the biggest difference that I have made in this off-season.

What about in the arena itself? hunter- got the MVP at Katowice, m0NESY got the MVP at BLAST, and it was kind of the playoffs where you lost that MVP. What was different this time round in the arena.

For me, I don’t feel like that I played worse in the playoffs because of the crowd or anything like that, there also hasn’t been too many playoffs that I struggled in, right? There’s no doubt that my performance hasn’t been up to the expectations in playoffs, but I think that was just something temporary. If you look at my past events in my career, like three, four, five years ago, I never struggled in playoffs, maybe sometimes I might struggle in the final. Sometimes its very hard to perform in such important games in the roles I am playing in. Overall I don’t think too much about playoffs or anything, I think it was just something temporary. I think now with doing really good at Cologne, and also I think I did fine in Dallas, Washington, all these events, I’m not too worried about it. I’m looking forward to getting back onto stage again.

What about m0NESY, it was obviously very close in terms of the MVP race, what was it like playing with him this event?

He has been amazing. He won us the Ancient game, if it wasn’t for him maybe we would be playing Vertigo now, the map that I hate the most, so he has been amazing. It’s crazy that he can display such a performance in such an arena whilst being 18 years old, he has a lot to prove to everyone, he’s way better than his numbers are showing right now and he just needs more experience and trust in himself, that he can always go for the moves and crazy plays, that’s where he shines. Sometimes he tries to play a bit passive and play for the team, but he needs to take responsibility and show the world, and we need to play around him. I think that’s what he did really good this event on most of the maps, and this event should definitely help him develop more as a player, and as a person as well. I think you can see the development and how he has evolved as a player ever since he joined G2. I think here’s no stopping him.

On HooXi – it feels like he’s got his mojo back, would you describe it the same?

Yeah, he has been really amazing this event, he has proved a lot of people wrong. I think he is a leader that a lot of IGLs should look up to, he is doing a lot of things for the team and doing a lot of the right things. Really happy and proud of him, and as I said everyone should look up to him that wants to become an IGL, he’s a great captain overall and great player that everyone should respect now.