kassad: "nV match was a team effort"

MOUZ are so far 1-1 in matches at ESL One Cologne, losing to Virtus.pro in the initial match despite winning 7-0 before taking down Envy.

We grabbed coach Aleksandar "⁠kassad⁠" Trifunović to talk about the group, his progression towards becoming the in-game leader, Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač's struggles and more:

I want to get back to our previous interview that we did at the main qualifier, where you said you leading the team was in the plans but wasn't happening yet, has that progressed over the past few weeks?

Yes, definitely, it has. I'm doing some calls now in-game as well, I'm more involved in the game plan as well. So yes, it has definitely progressed.

How much is it between you and NiKo then? How much do you call and how much does he?

Well, it's about 65/35 in favor of NiKo, but it's the other way around when it comes to game plan, so all in all it's 50/50, I guess.

Heading into the group, let's look at it overall, what you thought about when you saw it first.

It's the second most difficult group, obviously, and the best and the worst thing is that we can beat everybody, that's the best thing, and the worst thing is that we can lose to anybody. You saw it today that VP beat Liquid, we took down EnVyUs and lost to VP, so everybody can take on anybody in this group, it's the same with SK, fnatic and G2.

What did you think going into the game with Virtus.pro? Can you tell us a little bit about how the game progressed past the 7-0 mark?

Oh, it's very painful, I couldn't sleep last night, I was up to like 4 AM, thinking about that stuff, what happened, what went wrong. We had the perfect game plan, we executed from the pistol to the eighth round very well, and we tried some different stuff later on. We should have taken about three more rounds in that half, but in the CT half it just fell apart, the economy was bad, we gave the VP guys a chance, they took it and destroyed us on the CT half.

That reminds me of some previous mousesports matches, where when the emotions got to the players, it was hard for them to come back from it. Seeing as you were actually able to overcome the emotions, has that gotten better with you being able to call the pause and calm them down?

Well, we are still in the middle of the tournament, so tomorrow it'll probably show if it's better or not. It's definitely progress, but tomorrow is the most important match so far, so we'll see then.

Talking about the EnVyUs game, it was about 8-12 when you took the timeout, what did you talk about and what did you figure out?

After the timeout we talked like "it is do or die for us, let's just fight till the last round, the last frag and see what happens." It paid off, everybody contributed, it was a team effort, a team victory, I'm very proud of the guys. I'm just looking forward to tomorrow's match.

Touching on the team victory, before we've seen NiKo carrying the team through events, this time it hasn't been very true so far, is he off his game or has anything changed?

I think it's because of the map, we structured our game on Train differently and NiKo is getting less favored positions and more difficult stuff to do. He's doing that job very well, he's creating so much space for us to do whatever we want, without that I don't know if it would be better or worse, it's going fine now and we won't change it at this tournament for sure.

In the last group stage match you'll face the third team in your group, Liquid. It must be very hard to analyze and create a good game plan against them...

They're kind of a mix team, they came into this tournament to maximize their result with the best possible lineup they could assemble. Like you said, it's going to be very difficult.

We can finish off with the predictions of the remainder of the group stage, who do you think will go through?

Well, obviously NiP I think will go through from the decider tomorrow. Astralis should also win against dignitas, because they won every important match against them, I know it's like a Danish derby, the rivalry is big, but Astralis is the favorite there. In the group of death, I'm sure fnatic will bounce back, based on practices in the last month I think they have the biggest chance to be the second in their group. They will probably beat G2, even though it's still a best-of-one, if shox and ScreaM wake up and do their thing, it's gonna be hard, but I believe fnatic will prevail and be second.

So far we have conducted six interviews at the Major, which you can catch up on in the list below:

Ladislav "⁠GuardiaN⁠" Kovács: "Confident playing T side [on Cobble]"

Dmitry "⁠hooch⁠" Bogdanov: "We wanted revenge for MLG"

Joakim "⁠jkaem⁠" Myrbostad: "I expect us and G2 through"

Jarosław "⁠pashaBiceps⁠" Jarząbkowski: "Tech pause was good for us"

Nicolai "⁠device⁠" Reedtz: "gla1ve is really good at adapting"