Golden: "[Leaving] fnatic the best option"

Ballistix kicked off the Europe Minor with an upset over Envy on Cache, making it to the winners' match where they'll face the winner of BIG and Kinguin.

Golden admits moving away from fnatic would be the best option for the team long-term

After the match, we grabbed in-game leader Maikil "⁠Golden⁠" Selim to find out where they struggled in the latter part of the match and asked him about the team's future with fnatic considering ESL's rules disallowing academy teams to play at the same tournament as the main teams.

Let's first go back to your previous events, GeForce Cup and Copenhagen Games, where you finished last, what went wrong there?

In Copenhagen, the games we played were very close, we were in the lead but we still lost the game because we made too many mistakes. The environment there wasn't good enough for us to play, we are not experienced in that environment. And GeForce was a lot of other stuff going on, with the orgs and stuff like that, I felt like our team wasn't focused enough, I would say.

Was there anything you focused on after those events?

We spoke about it and we said that we just focus on the Minor and do our best there and we have prepared like two weeks prior to this event.

What about from the in-game perspective, was there anything specific that you focused on in practice?

Yeah, I would say communication, some minor adjustments to strategies and stuff like that.

You had a great start against EnVyUs, eventually leading 13-5 in the second half, but then had problems closing it out. What happened after that 13-5 point and how did you end up closing the match in the end?

We seem to be having a problem closing out games. That just comes with experience, we'll just get better at it. What happened was: two buy rounds, we got ambushed by RpK from vents when we were middle and we made some individual mistakes. We lost a lot of weapon rounds and then we had to eco a lot.

What kind of expectations and goals do you have for the Minor?

Our goal is to qualify for the Major Offline Qualifier, that's the only thing, we just take one match at a time and one round at a time, and go by that.

You seem to be one of the better fragging in-game leaders, how would you describe your style and how much focus does it take away from your individual play?

It's in the middle of strict and loose, so I'm trying to find a balance between those two, but it takes some of individual skill from me when I'm on the T side, but on the CT side I make up for it.

For a lower-tier team, who seem to change lineups quite often, you have a very stable roster. What keeps you guys together?

That would be the chemistry that we have, we have special characters in the team and we just fit together. Also, what we said is that if someone makes mistakes, has bad performances, we give the player time to improve, the time needs to be there, not just one week, two weeks, it has to be months. Finally, you will adapt, everyone will adapt, it's not impossible. You just gotta be together through bad times and good times.

You mentioned the issues that come with playing under fnatic, with ESL's rules about academy teams in place, not being able to play at the same events as the main team, how much have you discussed your future with the organization, will you eventually move away from them because of these issues?

Yes, we will definitely be moving away from fnatic, because that would be the best option for us in the long term. We are developing much faster than they thought, they didn't expect us to be this good this fast, from fnatic's point of view and from a lot of other people's point of view as well, and I feel like we are not actually an academy team, we are one of the tier two contenders I'd say.