Photo Credits: (Starladder)
They've changed the system by bringing the Minors to the same city as the Major, do you think that is a positive change?
I believe like since they changed the system we've had in the last two weeks with the different areas, the Asia Minor, the European Minor, NA minor, and so on, I think that all of them should be combined together now instead so instead of having two spots for each of the regions, they should have all eight at the same time and then do a huge group stage because then you will get eventually the best teams in the world to attend it and if you made it out, there's already a huge achievement there.
That's what I would go to and of course I can understand it's a global sport and it's something you always have to think about other scenes that are maybe not as developed compared to in Sweden or Europe in general, or the United States so of course they need a lot of help there in a way but maybe you can make other changes to how the whole system works. Let's say, the Asia Minor is going to be combined into a system that allows ten teams to be sent to the major instead of eight then. But at the same time, I'm not the one judging or making the calls on everything, but I would put it all of those minor qualifiers together and then play it out for those eight spots at a minor as the qualifying stages. How it would work and how it should be done? I can't really go into details about that because I'm not that smart person in the end, sadly.
Of the teams that are at the minor, a lot of them have seen you and OpTic as the teams to beat, which team do you think will be the biggest challenge to play against?
Well, since you already said, the EU Minor is, in a way, no offence to the other regions, 'better', and they should be giving more spots to them, which I agree to, to some extent at least, I believe that every team that is already attending the European Minor has a chance to qualify. It doesn't really matter who it is, even though maybe they are lesser known, maybe less experienced but they have already made it this far, through the online stage which is already a big mess and is already a big issue in general in Europe, so all the teams attending have a huge chance to qualify because let's say, OpTic for example, I don't want to say my own name right now because I don't want to give too much negativity things to myself or my teammates but let's say that OpTic have an off day, anything can happen on an off day.
Maybe they're not making it out of groups, you never know, and maybe another team has like a really good day and it's all about depending on the day. The European scene is so way ahead of so many levels of NA, Asia and so on, other areas, so I think any given team at the European Minor has a chance to qualify.
NiP had a disappointing time in Cologne to put it mildly, how do you individually and as a team, bounce back from that and try and move forward?
I believe that the Cologne one was very special especially for me, and the team, mostly because we were finally stepping up to playing the way we wanted to be playing before that, then we played really well in the online qualifier for this tournament. We shouldn't have lost the first game but we won three games in a row in the qualifier pretty confidentially but it's something in general there's just such a high skill level so it could have gone either way if you ask me. When we came into Cologne, I got affected more by my sickness which I've been having for a couple of years already, I couldn't drink, I couldn't eat, I couldn't really take care of myself, I was losing a lot of weight, so I couldn't really focus on the game and I think that affected, of course me the most, but it affected everyone on the team because we were finally starting to get where we wanted to and then there was a hiccup on the way and we crashed out there really hard and I think everyone was, actually I know we were very disappointed.
We had a long talk because we had a boot camp directly and a second boot camp after that and so on. We tried to fix our issues directly and we saw the bigger picture of what happened. We can say honestly, we had an off day but it was combined with other stuff as well outside of the game and we just felt like, it was good it happened there and not here at the Minor, at least. But we will see, there are still a couple of days before we actually start playing here so we will see what happens but I am 100% sure everyone feels very comfortable in this competition.
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