cadiaN: "I think that Vitality is potentially the deserved number one team, but not when they make the change."

I sat down with Casper "cadiaN" Møller after Heroic's win in the upper final in the BLAST Fall Groups.

Hugo “TheSwedishJoker” Nilsson Meier: Let's start with the Paris major. You were huge favorites against GamerLegion. What happened?

Casper “cadiaN” Møller: I think that you could feel in the first half of Ancient that we were definitely not playing our game. And some of our philosophies, we were not sticking to them. Then we managed to play a very good T half and come back and win. Then on Inferno [...] We were 1-0 up in maps, and we were leading, I think, with 12-10 on the CT side, and they crawl their way back and played a really good T side. And I think iM probably had the series of his life. I mean, he had the tournament of his life, he was playing really good. But we definitely underperformed and didn't play too well. And yeah, it's hard to say exactly what happened on Mirage. So iM said that they had studied us a lot and copied a lot of our play styles throughout months. So they knew a lot of the stuff we were doing. But overall, we lost to ourselves. And yeah, I think it's hard to be very concrete about what exactly happened.

TheSwedishJoker: Before this event, there was the player break with many roster moves happening amongst the top teams. Why did you guys decide on not doing any changes? And how was it to have a vacation, just watching everything unfold and not having to worry about the team or doing anything like that?

cadiaN: I think as long as everyone is putting in full effort and giving it their all in practice and outside the server, making sure that they do this for the social part of the team. I don't see a reason why we would change when we are consistently so good. You win as a team and you lose as a team. And we're constantly trying to figure out how to make sure we win in the later part of the tournaments as well. And yeah, watching everything from the vacation was weird. Just seeing all the rumors, all the rosters and just waiting for it to be announced. And definitely a lot of interesting changes. But yeah, like I said, it was also nice for all of us to go on vacation and know that we have each other and we don't need to change anything.

TheSwedishJoker: Out of all of the new teams you have already played BIG and NAVI. Is there any team that you think looks extra tough and that you're excited to play against in a tournament?

cadiaN: Yeah, we practiced a lot against Cloud9, and they've been looking really good. So I think for me, the answer is pretty clear that they're looking sharp. In a way, I would say they have some of the Heroic-ish situations where they have five players who can all decide the outcome of the game. But in my opinion, they don't have the same leadership as we do. So that's probably going to be the biggest task for them. But they definitely have a lot of firepower. And I think all of the five players are insanely talented.

TheSwedishJoker: You guys had Kasper Straube, your physio and team manager. He moved to Astralis recently. Has that had any impact on the team in any way. And how do you feel that Oliver, his replacement, is doing?

cadiaN: I think, of course, when you have someone who is with you, for many of the tournaments that you travel with and have fun with and joke around with, you definitely feel like it's different, but different doesn't mean that it's worse. So I think the team chemistry is so strong that [...] the players are the same, the coaches are the same. That's the people who are the most together. I think the people who are substituting in are like helping with everything flowing, like Oliver for the tournament, and Søndre is doing an amazing job. And as always, we're having a really good time at the tournament. We're eating ice cream, we're going for long walks, we went to the cinema, we are grinding late every night playing deathmatch and so on. I think we are the Heroic and we always have a good time together.

TheSwedishJoker: Speaking of this tournament, you've been looking pretty good. You're unbeatable, even against NaVi who we thought would be able to put up a fight. How's it for you to come back after a break and just see the team perform in such a way? How is it to play against a new team like Navi and beat them so comfortably?

cadiaN: Yeah, I think it's been one of our better starts to a new season. But also I think that it's hard because the two teams who played have changed three players so it's kind of hard to judge them this early on as well. So yeah, I think we've been looking good but it's also a bit unfair to judge on the opponent's yet, so it's early days but I'm happy with the mentality See and the effort and the things that we can control. So yeah.

TheSwedishJoker: How do you prepare against an unknown entity like NAVI who only has one official game played before?

cadiaN: I won't touch too much on how we prepared for them. But we had most of the focus on ourselves.

TheSwedishJoker: Have you guys talked about any expectations for this upcoming season? As we spoke about last season, the major was the big one for you. And now we don't have a major for this season. So have you guys set any expectations and goals for this season already?

cadiaN: Yeah, I think we haven't pinpointed every tournament yet. And like value them as how important they are. But I think right now it's for us still about establishing ourselves as one of the CSGO teams to remember. And obviously, not something you really cement yourselves as at BLAST groups, but most of it [IEM] Cologne and some of the stadium events. So we want to end CSGO in the best way possible. And when CS2 arrives, I think we'll set new goals for that game.

TheSwedishJoker: You mentioned CS2, Valve has said that it should come by the end of the summer, but we don't know exactly when. Does it impact the team knowing that that game is on the horizon? Do you talk about it within the team and already make some plans before it?

cadiaN: We talked a little bit about it in the team. And we've structured some things around when we believe the game will be out. But I think where some teams are maybe hungry for the game to be pushed, we're having a good time playing CSGO as the best team in the world. So we take it as it comes. I think that we have a plan for how we want to do things in CSGO. And we have a plan of how we want to try and benefit of the changes that will happen in the new game. But I think that it's too early to like prepare fully for it. It's more about how you may be decided, like what tournaments you travel to and how you want to save energy and stuff like this.

TheSwedishJoker: You mentioned being the best team in the world. You lost that spot briefly to Vitality and G2 took over that spot for a while earlier in the season. Now you're back. Must feel good to be back at number one spot. But after having that spot so many times now. Do you feel like it's harder to maintain it rather than being an underdog and fighting to get back to the number one spot?

cadiaN: I'm not sure. Because I think that Vitality is potentially the deserved number one team, but not when they make the change. Now if they would be sticking with Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen, we wouldn't be number one in the ranking. And I wouldn't be saying this in the interview, but they decided to make a change. And obviously you can't predict but I expect their results to be the same as they were with dupreeh. If it's easier or harder to reach number one again, after so many times, I'm not sure. I think that we haven't had long since number one, but we had quite a lot. And right now it's not like it's something I think too much about right now that we're number one as it was maybe the first time it happened or the second time. Right now it's also focusing more on how to win the trophies and such because it's a big prestige to be number one. And then it's also due to our consistency. But we want to win more trophies and we're trying to look into how we can do that, how we can manage to handle the pressure better and stuff like this.

TheSwedishJoker: One last question now. The CS2 Major here in Royal Arena on home soil is getting closer and closer. You mentioned in Paris that you had issues playing against underdogs, especially in the playoff stages. Are you looking to fix those issues that you had in Paris, back in the major before the CS2 major and maybe even before the bigger tournaments coming up this season?

cadiaN: We are always working to become better in the areas that we're not successful. And so that's not necessarily one or two tournaments. That's for every tournament we try to become better and learn from the mistakes and talk openly about what were the reasons for not performing and stuff like this. Nothing new and that trend for us we always try to become better

Photo cred: Blast Premier and Michal Konkol
@BLASTPremier @KonkolMichal