Friis: "Need to trust ourselves"

HEROIC lost their opening match against Epsilon 26-22 on Cobblestone, putting them in a tough position at the start of the group stage in Bucharest.

Before their elimination match against HellRaisers, we talked to their AWPer Michael "⁠Friis⁠" Jørgensen to find out how the team is feeling after switching Lukas "⁠gla1ve⁠" Rossander for Nikolaj "⁠niko⁠" Kristensen.

Lets start with what happened before this event - you were at ESWC 2016, you didn’t have a great result but it was your first event with niko. He seems to be playing pretty well, but I’m just curious about your thoughts on the event in general and him fiting into the lineup.

Him fitting in is going quite good but we only had four days of practice. At ESWC we played against a team that hit more shots than us. I think it was the second map against fnatic academy that was the problem because we lost so many clutch rounds, like against Epsilon today so it was kind of a same problem in both games. I don’t really know what the biggest issue is but I think with more practice we can get back to a high level.

The roster shuffle came in a pretty bad timing for you, but it also happened for four teams here. In general, how do you feel about the fact that when the bigger teams pick-up talent from smaller teams just when the Minor/Major cycle starts and leave them in a pretty bad position?

In our situation it was our own choice, as we could keep gla1ve if we wanted but he really wanted to play in Astralis and we didn’t want to block that - and we got the chance to get niko as well. I think we can get even better with this team, firepower wise. The only thing we need is for me and Snappi to step up.

Talking about that, you lost your first match against Epsilon where you had a big lead in the beginning of the CT side.You were playing good on the B site with the AWP, but they were able to claw back and win after two overtimes. What do you think went wrong?

The things that were wrong were the clutch rounds. We were 14-11 up and we had a 2-on-1 on B and we said “hide”, but one of the players jumped out died - and we lost the following 1-on-1. If we had won that one we would be 15-11 up with five match points. We had one more round when it was 15-14 and they had nothing, but we had a wrong call and they crushed us.

In overtime it was really hard for me on the B site with the AWP. I was really bad as T as well but on the CT side it’s hard to play a lot of rounds because they just peek, and when I hold the angle they flash me off. I went on A for one round and that worked out for me, but in the last overtime they just overpowered us.

You have a best-of-three elimination match coming up, and since there was an upset in the other match in the group, you need to play against HellRaisers, one of the favorites for the whole tournament. How do you feel about it?

I feel OK. I know they have practiced a lot and they have a lot of tactics, they are a good team and have strong players. We need to beat them, we need to stop making so many mistakes and I need to step up - if not I don’t think we can win.

No matter what happens here, what are your plans for the future, what do you think you can achieve with niko when he settles in and this roster stabilizes a bit?

I think we will still be a top 20 team for sure, we just need to trust in ourselves, I think we have lost a lot of trust in ourselves. I can feel it myself, and I can feel it on some of the other players as well. We’ve had a really bad month, also with gla1ve. It’s getting better now actually. We need to focus on improving and keep going.

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