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CS29 years agoAndrew "HeaT." Musick

friberg: "Playing the Katowice grand final last year was one of the highlights of my career."

In an interview with fragbite, Ninjas in Pyjamas' own Adam "friberg" Friberg discusses the addition of allu, the Katowice atmosphere, and the potential of non-European CS:GO teams.

 

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Sweden's most storied Counter-Strike team, Ninjas in Pyjamas, finished runners-up to Team LDLC (now Team EnVyUs) at 2014's final major, Dreamhack Winter. As such, they earned themselves an automatic berth in 2015's first major event, ESL One Katowice. One week ahead of the $250,000 main event, fragbite sat down with friberg to get his thoughts on NiP's recent roster change, as well as his team's preparation for the upcoming tournament.

Read on for some interesting excerpts from the interview:

fragbite: As mentioned, you tried both Delpan and allu to find a fifth player in time. Is there any specific reason you picked allu in this case?
friberg: We were looking for a good player who can both use rifles and AWP, and it immediately felt great when allu played. According to me, he's one of the best AWP:s in the world.

fragbite: The biggest question that was risen in connection to the new recruit is the fact that there's a language barrier. Have you noticed any specific situations where it feels like any kind of "handicap"?
friberg: We all talk and understand english, and allu speaks some Swedish in-game, so it's been pretty smooth. We almost talk 100% Swedish when we play, and allu understands a lot of what we're saying. So the way we see it, it's no problem!

fragbite: You went to Katowice last year, where you reached the grand final but fell to Virtus.pro. Many players have hailed the atmosphere in Spodek Arena, and seeing as CS:GO has grown the past year, this year's edition shouldn't disappoint. When you think about last year, what do you look forward to the most for the 2015 edition?
friberg: Playing the Katowice grand final last year was one of the highlights of my career. The audience was awesome, cheering for both teams even though they wanted Virtus.pro to win, and the atmosphere in the arena was generally great. It's gonna be a lot of fun to go there again, and hopefully we'll get to win in front of the huge audience!

fragbite: There are four non-European teams on the participant's list for Katowice; Cloud 9, CLG, KaBuM and Vox Eminor. All of these teams proved to be surprisingly strong in the final qualifier. Do you think 2015 is the year where we see non-European CS:GO reach definite top, and when do you think it's realistic to expect a non-European team winning a major?
friberg: I think North American teams have the potential to be very good, but they have to put a lot more time to practice, which is hard since they don't have many top teams to play against. I think that a non-European team could win a major if they come as underdogs, where teams haven't dedicated time to see how they play, but you can't predict when this would happen in that case.

Friberg produces some clear, honest answers to some compelling questions. For further reading, the whole interview can be found here, in both Swedish and English.


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Andrew "HeaT." MusickHaving followed competitive scenes from Starcraft: Brood War to Dota 2, Andrew Musick has been a Counter-Strike player/fan since 1.5. He recently joined GosuGamers as a CS:GO writer.

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