zonic: "We had a way better CT side"

Astralis have had to take the long and winding path back to prominence following the roster swap of Markus "⁠Kjaerbye⁠" Kjærbye for René "⁠cajunb⁠" Borg, as the team's string of 5-8th place finishes and defeats to domestic opposition over the past months have shown.

The team's opening match of ESL One New York against G2 also looked as if it were starting off another disappointing campaign for the Danes, until crucial plays from Nicolai "⁠device⁠" Reedtz and Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen and counter-reads against the Frenchmen suddenly saw Astralis come back from a 5-13 deficit and win the map 16-13.

We quickly caught up with team coach Danny "⁠zonic⁠" Sørensen, who has been lately affected by Valve's new coach ruling (which debuts here at ESL One New York), to get his thoughts on being a coach in this new era of CS:GO and on the team's comeback:

How big of an impact has Valve's new ruling on coaches had as of this first game?

In the beginning we were disappointed [with the ruling], but we did know that some other teams have had a harder time adapting because I'm not an in-game leader, but for example starix from Na`Vi is [motions towards a Na`Vi player in the elevator], but now I actually think it's okay...I still hate it though!

Is the new rule with four timeouts useful?

That rule is definitely useful and I actually think it is quite nice because I could instantly see if there was an issue with the team and I actually thought that I had a better overview of the gameplay because I didn't have the TeamSpeak and all the noise. I could actually see how they were communicating and what was going on on their screens.

So it was actually okay but once again I would still prefer to have a bigger role in coaching.

Who was the most responsible for turning the game around at 5-13?

To be honest, I think the biggest factor was our switch over to CT. We had a way better CT compared to our T side.

People started communicating better and especially we took a clever timeout as CT where we pretty much stacked A afterwards and they went A. I saw a couple of demos before the match where they were either explosive on B or doing the smoke line on A, and when they had done both of those, I took a timeout and said "They're going to try and do an A split now, go short."

So we put Xyp9x on Goose and device on the slope and we had Kjaerbye in CT spawn fast rotating to A. And they did exactly what I thought and we got pumped up from there and people started hitting their shots.

How important was it to win that game considering the recent results for your team?

It was really important for us; obviously we have struggled a bit, especially against Danish teams. It's tough now around CS:GO these days. You see all the middle level teams stepping up and really trying to make a career out of it. Before you only had to really fear five or six teams; now you have to fear a team like PENTA so it's difficult.

Were you worried about Dust2 before the game because G2 were after all on a seven map winning streak on that map?

We know that they're really good on Dust2 but it's also become one of our great maps after the summer vacation. We've worked quite a lot on it...we were hoping for Overpass against them, which they banned, but Dust2 was just fine for us. We knew we had to play our A game in order to win that game.

What are the plans now before your next match?

Just going to chill and relax. We might potentially take a look at who we're playing next...VP I think...but just happy we're off to a good start as of now!

The first round match-ups of ESL One New York are continuing, with a mouth-watering match between Natus Vincere and Liquid set to take place soon.

stich writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter