Zyphon: "I don't think people should be writing us off"

They needed a stand-in and they wrote to Sprout, and Sprout said yes. I was ready and I wanted to do it, Sprout did too.

I'm feeling confident. We had a week of practice and honestly, I think it turned out better than expected and everyone in the squad would agree. We had very positive results.

I got a little bit of everything. Anchor roles that I'm used to and star roles on some maps where it made sense for me. I'm very happy with the positions I got, I'm in a position where I can shine and show myself off.

Yeah, I got some lurk positions, but some control positions too. I'll be an all-rounder.

It would mean a lot to me, my whole family would get to come and watch me play. I could also meet a lot of Danish fans and that would be something special.

I'm not sure what to expect, I've never played in front of a home crowd, so hopefully, it's good and it's positive.

I think it's the positive attitude they bring to the team, that's the biggest difference I've seen so far. They always bring the hype, they're always positive, they always say "It's okay, fuck that, we're going to win the next round."

They're not tiltable. They're very positive about the game and even in practice as well, even if they have a bad score they never go down mentally.

They're always positive and communicate the same, they're strong people, strong players, and they're good at the game. But I guess that's what you expect from a guy who has won five Majors [laughs]. He's a role-model.

I think it's really good for me. I've gone down in the dumps... wait, no that's the wrong way of putting it [laughs], but there is a shadow over me, I'm non-existent right now.

It's a harsh way of putting it but I do feel like people have kinda forgotten about me, so this is a good opportunity for me to show that I can play in tier-one events, be a strong player, and that I can contribute to a tier-one team. That's what this is all about for me.

To be honest, not really. I'm really happy that they have had so much success, I love them all to death. I played with them for such a long time, they're my best friends in the Danish scene and when I'm not playing with Sprout I'm on TeamSpeak with nicoodoz and jabbi, we're always talking. I only have love for them and I never felt frustration.

Of course, I would love it if it was me who won all of those tournaments, but I'll never hold a grudge or be frustrated over it. I'm happy for my friends.

I think with the lineup we had the wrong mentality. We weren't working hard enough as a tier-two team and we didn't have an IGL that was a true IGL. cadiaN is a true IGL, HooXi is a true IGL, they have all the IGL qualities that you want, and they know what needs to be done as an IGL and what mental state and behaviour they need, they're true leaders from the heart. That was something we missed in Sprout, a true leader who knows what to do and what to say to the team. That, along with the mentality of the team, were the main issues.

I would say it was the IGL issue and it's hard to find very good players in tier-two. You either have to bring up unknown talents or buy someone who is really expensive who has already proved themselves, but that guy is going to cost a lot. It's just hard.

If you don't have the money then you're left with unknown talents and you have to take a chance on someone and maybe it doesn't pan out, then you're stuck going back and forth between two or three different lineups and you have to switch out players all the time because the unknown talent wasn't good enough, someone else wasn't good enough, and then the mentality of the team goes down. There are so many factors that need to go right before the team can keep evolving.

I guess it's personal about motivation and mentality, right? At least for me, I've struggled with it, just staying at the same level for so long, it's like 'What keeps me going? Why do I need to keep going if I'm never getting anywhere?' You know what I mean? I think that also affected me a little bit because some time ago I used to have that problem, I didn't want to watch the demos and things like that because I was still on the same level and I didn't know what needed to be done for me to get better.

Then I started to fix myself. I started going to the gym and eating properly and I started watching demos, working harder, and getting a better mentality. I was more happy in the team and bringing more hype in games, then I felt like my individual level went up and I was more motivated to keep going.

You need to do good things and get them in your routine, when they're in there, you become more motivated and you want to do more of the boring stuff like watching demos and practising all the little things rather than relaxing on the couch and watching streams.

For now, I'm just a stand-in, and I don't know what the plans are. I can only say what I want, I guess.

I want to play tier-one consistently, but for myself, I want to be a very good player.

I think with this event, now that I'm being an all-rounder I can play everything, and I have roles that I can show myself off well and I can show that I can do whatever a team needs me to do and become more valuable.

Yeah, I think so. We've also put a lot of emphasis on the fact that we just need to play and have fun. We just need to do whatever we feel like and that means we can easily cheese through games a little bit if we're all playing good Counter-Strike.

If we play together, have fun, nothing can stop us like a brick wall people will need to go through while they don't know what's happening because they don't have any anti-strats for us.

That's our strength right now, we're an underdog but people don't know what to expect from us or how we're going to play. It'll be good.

It will be a mix of everything. In the practices we showed we can play as a team and play strong, controlled CS and also be a pug team.

We have a lot of strong aimers. dupreeh is really good, he hasn't fallen off even if his stats in Vitality were bad. We have TeSeS and sjuush who are both really strong, and cadiaN is a great AWPer. We have a really strong aim vibe so we can play the puggy style and take all those fucking duels and show them what we're made of.

I've also learned though that we can play together and play good controlled CS, so expect everything from us: Controlled, controlled chaos, and a puggy style.

Yeah, I think so for sure. The strong thing about being on a Danish team in contrary to an international team is that when you're in a clutch with someone who is Danish, we're all thinking in the same way.

For example, in a clutch like a 2v3 and if a player goes for a kill, every Danish player knows that it's now the other guy's turn to play because the first player has drawn attention to himself. But let's say, if I'm playing with my old Sprout teammate lauNX who is crazy in the head and a full aimer, he just keeps going, you know? Danish people instantly think 'Okay, I've got my kill, now it's my teammate's turn to play', we talk together and say what the next move is.

We all think and play in the same way and that's why Danish CS is so fundamentally strong, we know what's in each other's minds without really knowing it. We were all brought up on the same style and by the same IGLs.

For me, in the first practice with Heroic, I could instantly feel that Danish is at least 15% better. I could feel it from the first pistol round.

In Danish, the language is so precise and in English it's so hard to say someone is in a specific corner or just to the left of a corner, but that's so easy to do in Danish and we have these small words that give detail to where someone is standing and what you want to say, that alone makes it so much easier to communicate.

Of course, it's your own language as well, so the thoughts come so much faster. In English, even though you might not think that you have to think about it, it still comes to you with a little bit of a delay.

[laughs] To be honest, I don't even know anymore. I think it still comes in Danish, but a lot of the time in CS you don't think, you just do.

If you're in tier three, maybe you think about things more before doing it, but when you're in tier one you can not think you have to just do. When the decisions come to your mind you need to already be doing them, you have to be prepared.

Anything you want to do in tier-one CS you have to say and do it instantly otherwise it's going to be too late. That's what makes tier-one players tier-one players.

The goal for me at least is to make it to the arena. I don't expect to win the tournament. I expect to do the best I can, and I'm playing to win of course but I don't expect it.

Mainly I'm just playing to do my best. I don't want to say we're going to win or that we have a good chance of even making the final because when you do that it's when the bad thoughts come into play.

I don't think they should be writing us off. Just off the base feeling I've had from this practice, it's been very, very good. It's the base feeling of the communication and the vibe in the team, there's a lot of hype and people are praising each other and we have a very strong foundation for when we get into the games that will help us perform.

The only thing it depends on is the mood of the team, we need to all be happy and play to have some fun and play to do our best. I'm sure we will do some damage.

Well... I don't even know [laughs]. I think it would be something I haven't experienced before, so I couldn't really put it into words. I could only say it after the event if we do win it. [laughs]