Astralis have been in fine form so far at BLAST Premier World Final 2024.
After dispatching NAVI yesterday in a dominant fashion, they have now advanced to the semi-finals with a 2-0 victory over MOUZ in the Group A winner's match.
After the game, we caught up with Staehr to discuss the team's growth since their debut, cadiaN's arm, and whether the day off they now have will be a benefit to them in Saturday's semi-finals.
How does it feel to make it to the semi-finals?
It feels amazing, we haven't really started with the new team because of a lack of practice and now we have had a little bit more so I think we have some good groundwork now on how we want to play CS.
We're all on the same page and the more we play together, the more we think the same, we like to play the mid-rounds and that helps a lot.
Does it feel like the team is starting to gel now?
Yeah, it's helping a lot. We had the incident with cadiaN's arm so we didn't practice as much because you lose some percentages with that, but with communication and teamplay it hasn't been difficult to learn how we want to play together. It's all about theory.
That time we've now had has helped a lot, and it's early to say when we've only won two BO3s, but I think everyone can see we have good fundamentals.
Pimp highlighted that the trio of stavn, jabbi, and device is the key to the success of this team, do you agree with that? What do you make of their performances here so far?
There's not much to say, we can all see they're playing insane. Everyone needs to perform for us to win, but, we have five individuals that can pop off and have insane games, so even if someone has a bad game, someone else can step up.
Everyone has the potential to step up and has the opportunity to do so, no one has extremely bad roles and doesn't have a chance to do that.
You mentioned cadiaN's arm earlier, do you think it might be a lucky charm considering how it's going here so far?
[laughs] It might be, it might be. We were unlucky with the arm, sure, but we've got some wins.
It doesn't effect us that much, he might get a couple of kills less in the matches but it's not like it's unplayable for him. We wouldn't use it as an excuse if we were to lose a match.
This is the last event before the Major, how important is it that you're getting these results now?
It's important to prove we have what it takes by winning these two matches. We had a rough start, we didn't really win with the new lineup yet, but now we're showing we have the potential to win against very big teams.
I think that it mentally helps a lot, but also we saw in our practices that we didn't need to win here to perform well at the Major. If we can play like we do in those practices at the Major, we don't have to worry.
How important will this day off you now have be for the semi-final on Saturday?
I'm not sure, it's good to relax a little bit, but it's hard to find practice here in Singapore with just one day, so that's a hit. There's still the quarter-finals though, so we'll still be in the game mode and ready to play.
So, it's nice to have the relaxation day but it would've also been nice to play in the quarters. I actually don't know.
How exciting is it to get to play in front of the crowd?
I love it, playing in front of the crowd makes me enjoy the moment more and the hype from the crowd. For me, I'm very excited and I know the whole team is, we'll have fun and we'll enjoy the game.
BLAST ApS., Hauser Plads 1, 3., 1127 Copenhagen