After a solid tenure with Apeks, Polish Counter-Strike legend kuben now finds himself at the helm of ENCE. Signed alongside gla1ve, reports suggest they won't be the only signings ENCE need to make in the near future.
Despite this, ENCE put up a valiant showing her at BLAST Premier World Final, although they were ultimately eliminated following a thrilling game against NAVI.
After their elimination, we spoke to kuben about the game versus NAVI, the roster, and his plans for 2024.
A disappointing time for you here at World Final, how are you feeling?
After this game, I'm definitely disappointed. I knew how hard it was to come back after the first map and even at 10-2 down on map two. We stayed strong and we used the momentum in the beginning of Nuke, we were leading 11-5, and I'm not sure if everyone was already in the quarter-finals [in their minds].
We lost one crucial round, a 4v2 post-plant situation, didn't take the right decisions, and for this moment it felt like everything crashed and we couldn't find the answers to counter their plays.
It's sad because we could have won this game, and considering we had maybe five days of pracc and a few officials, in comparison to NAVI and how long they've played, I felt we were a good team today but the outcome was that we lost the game.
Do you think the outcome was maybe a result of carelessness after the comeback and taking that lead on Nuke?
Well, we don't have too many things set in place so far. First, we tried to use the things the guys have in place, but it's a bit of a different playstyle to what Lukas [gla1ve] and I prefer. Even then, it's still impossible to learn 5-10 different strats on every map considering that we play six of them.
I'm not sure, maybe it was just individual decision-making, or maybe it was just pressure in the individual chaos about roster changes and stuff. I think mentally the players were not ready to play as high-level competition as it is here.
So you mentioned the roster changes, there have been reports recently, how does that affect the mood in the camp coming into the event?
I was a player myself and I know it's super difficult. I can't go into details of course as things are not official, but definitely, it affects focus, their mood, and I know you can't fully focus on the game when such things are happening.
I feel sorry for them, it's sad that it's happening now when I've joined the team and I would love to work with a group of people that are eager to play for the org and for this lineup, but it's not happening yet. We'll start a new journey at the beginning of the season and I'm looking forward to it.
You said you can't go into much because nothing is official, but what is next for you as the new coach of ENCE? Is it finding a healthier lineup? Is it working with this one?
In general, there are like five different scenarios in terms of which lineup we're going to end up with. Definitely, I will try to build the fundamentals and the structure I was building in my former teams, when I reflected on it upon leaving Apeks it was always working, even though it's nothing set into order it's just intuition and the experience of working with players and knowing them. It seems like it's working and I have skills in doing this, so this is what I will mainly focus on and definitely we would like to play in the Major as all other teams do. But yeah, we'll see what the future holds.
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