REZ: "We showed more balls [than Gambit], that made us win"

The Swedish side started off the tournament with a confident win over FaZe, taking down the European mixture on Nuke. Moving on to the winner match, Ninjas in Pyjamas split the first two maps with the Kazakhstani side, but a strong Train performance got them the series win in the end.

REZ doesn't think that the Malmö crowd will make him nervous

In the aftermath of Ninjas in Pyjamas's win, HLTV.org sat down with Fredrik "⁠REZ⁠" Sterner to talk about the events he played before the break, the matches against FaZe and Gambit and the stage pressure.

I'll start with the end of the last "season", you playing ESL One Cologne and DreamHack Valencia. Talk me through that period, how were you feeling as a team and how happy you were with those results?

We really didn't expect that much when we went into Cologne because it's our first tournament and it's a big tournament for us. As a new team, kind of a new team I would say because we had to reconstruct the NiP playstyle a bit, I was surprised by how it went in Cologne for sure. None of us thought that we were going to go that far, but we were really proud of ourselves there, we were not that sad about going out in the quarter finals.

Going into Valencia, it's a DreamHack and we had big expectations because of the team. The biggest opponent I would say was Heroic and we thought they were going to win against Red Reserve in the semi-final, but it didn't go as planned for them, so we took an easy win against Red Reserve in the final. It was my first win with NiP so that feels amazing. Now, here in Malmö, I would say we expect more than we did before because we have practiced more and we have new stuff coming. I believe can go far this tournament.

How much have you been accommodated to the lineup now, playing with the team for a couple of months? What have you been doing in the break and preparing for this tournament?

We have been bootcamping a lot, before every tournament, and like I said we are still building the new NiP lineup and we are still figuring things out. We are doing a lot of mistakes right now but we are learning every day. We have a bright future I think.

The first game you played here was against FaZe and it ended up being Nuke. So tell me about that part first. Was that a map you were expecting to play against them and what were you expecting from the game in general?

FaZe have had a good start for a new lineup. You wouldn't really think so because, for a new lineup, you think they are going to be struggling at the start, but that is not the case. We thought we are going to have a tough opponent for sure. We wanted to play Nuke because we know they are not strong on it and they don't play it that much, but they are playing all the maps, we are just trying to find the weak points and we found one in Nuke. We are comfortable on Nuke as well, so going into that map we all believed in it.

Touching on the next opponent, Gambit, what were you expecting from them? A lot of people didn't know what to expect when Zeus left, have you been playing practices against them and what did you think based on that?

We have practiced against Gambit now and then, it goes back and forth, they win and we win. When we went into this match we tried to mostly focus on our game instead of their game, but we had good reads as well so we went for that. Maybe on Overpass we went long too many times because we thought they didn't play long and they didn't have info on us, but that is just over analyzing I would say. If we had focused more on our game, we would take that Overpass game easily.

Playing with confidence was key to the win on Cache

On Cache, both you and Gambit played 13-2 on the T side. How does that happen, how did you not get more rounds on the CT side?

I don't know, Cache has gone to a really T sided map I would say. I don't really know what happened to us in that game, I would say that we were too patient, too scared to meet them face to face when they threw nades and stuff. That is what we did in the last rounds and what made us win. We showed more balls, so to say. We showed more balls for sure, that made us win.

Moving forward, you now have a spot in the playoffs, you are going to be playing on the stage. Last time, in Cologne, it seemed like you were a bit taken by the big stage, you didn't have that good of a performance. Have you been thinking about that, has that maybe changed now, playing in Valencia as well? How do you think it will go for you personally?

I think that playing in front of this many fans, a lot of NiP fans are coming to the Malmö Arena, it's going to channel that energy to the positive thoughts and it's going to be fun instead. I'm not going to focus much on being emotional, nervous and stuff, I think I'm getting more confident seeing all the fans rooting for us instead. I will feel more confident.