After a disappointing loss to G2 in the Group A Lower Bracket semi-final, our team was eliminated from the prestigious LAN tournament, missing the chance to compete at Lanxess Arena. Despite a dominant win over 9z, we struggled against the world's top teams, first falling to Natus Vincere, then to G2, resulting in an early exit from Cologne.
ruggah: "We know we have the quality to compete against the best teams in the world, so it was mainly a matter of shaking off the first map."
Our CT sides were particularly fragile, leading to a poor win rate throughout the tournament. We excelled on the T side in our victory over 9z, but against G2, things quickly fell apart on Dust 2, where we secured only one round in a crushing 13-1 defeat, with Nikola "NiKo" Kovač adding insult to injury with a few knife kills. We fought back on Mirage, winning 13-10, but suffered another heavy loss on Ancient, 13-3, a map where we had previously shown dominance.
According to Ruggah, G2 was effective at disrupting their plays on the server, which led to the Danes not capitalizing on the moments when they had control:
"On Dust2, we failed to execute in the first few rounds, which unfortunately led to some uncertainty for the rest of the half. We had opportunities to put more rounds on the board, but G2 was great at disrupting our play," ruggah said.
Why was there such a big difference in performance at the start?
"It was a mix of our strategies not being on point and lacking individual output," ruggah said after the loss.
There was a moment with a knife kill—was it a bit arrogant and provocative of G2?
"No, that's part of our vibe in CS (as a community). It has alway been a good mix of entertainment and mental warfare."
You lost 19 out of the first 21 rounds but still fought back on Mirage against G2. What does that say about your mental strength?
"We know we have the quality to compete against the best teams in the world, so it was mainly a matter of shaking off the first map. Even on our CT side, where we only got four rounds, we felt like we were in the game and doing the right things. Our focus at the side switch was to keep believing because if we could crack the code, we knew G2 would finally have something to worry about. Talking about it is one thing; executing it is another, so I'm glad we showed that, especially to ourselves."
In an interview with HLTV.org, Martin 'stavn' Lund was also asked about the knife kill on Mirage. The 22-year-old rifler found them a bit too disrespectful, in contrast to his head coach.
"They were playing with full confidence. They are playing really well at the moment, you could also see it in the game against Spirit, they absolutely destroyed them as well. When they are pulling out knives, obviously, it's disrespectful, you know? I've been on teams before when we were destroying a team like that, and it's the easiest thing to do. It's just disrespect," stavn noted.
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