dupreeh: "It was really obvious that [fnatic] were playing scared on Train"

The Danish side lived up to their favorites tag in the Scandinavian matchup against fnatic, with a 16-5 victory on Train followed up by a tighter, 16-12 win on Overpass to get the 2-0 in the series.

dupreeh said that a healthier lifestyle helped his in-game performance

To hear more about the game, playing the Swedes online and the outlook on the semi-final, we interviewed Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen.

Coming into the matchup, playing against fnatic, what did you think going in? Map pool-wise, did you get what you expected?

We actually got suprised by them picking Train. We just played them online and they demolished us on both Mirage and Train. I don't know why they decided to go for Train because, in my opinion, we are better on Train than we are on Mirage. So it was good for us that they picked Train and we were able to start on the CT side. So yeah, that was a surprise and we expected them to either ban Nuke or Overpass, so we would always pick the opposite of what they didn't want to play. So we already had our pick in our minds, for a long time.

So yeah, picking Train was really good for us, so we didn't have to play Mirage. Not that we don't like Mirage but, if we compare Mirage and Train, I think that we are better on Train.

You played them two-three days ago in ESL Pro League, so how did that feel and how much did that play into this match?

I think it played into our favor. fnatic had a really strong day that day, and we had a completely off day. I think we had been playing six ESL Pro League games throughout the week and we had to be at the airport four hours after the fnatic match. So I think maybe the mindset was already out, left for the airport. It was just a weird day, already in practice people were saying "we feel completely off today, but it's probably just practice, we will play better".

But I think the online match played in our favor and I wouldn't say that they put too much in that win, but I think they came here confident. And when they faced us here and we hit our shots and played really good as a team, they got a bit scared. It was really obvious that on Train they played scared. I think they came back to their old form and how they played in Pro League on Overpass in the end and we almost threw that one. So it got a little bit shaky, but they played pretty poor on Train and on Overpass, even though it's not one of their strongest maps.

On Overpass, after your good start, your CT side started being a bit shaky. So tell me a bit about that, what were the issues for you on the CT side?

I think we made a pretty bad mistake, we were up 12-7 or something like that and I called for the team to fall back because we were in a two-man lead. And I don't know who died, but we lost some guns for free and we failed a little bit. So we lost a lot of economy there and we kind of gave them the option to get back into the game, giving them guns and letting them build economy. That was a pretty poor decision by us, but that was something we are going to learn from, everyone who made a mistake in that round knows that and now they won't do it in the rest of the tournament.

Your performance in this series was insane, but in general, the past few weeks and months, you've been stepping up a bit. Tell me a bit about that, is there anything that changed in your game, in the team composition, what is the reason for that?

I think everything comes down to you always believing in yourself. I've had a lot of discussion with my mental coach, because everyone makes mistakes and I have some mental mistakes I have to learn from. Some of them are maybe bigger than others and I always try to work on them. Overall, I've started working out and eating healthier so I feel like I have more energy. And being more confident about my outside, how I look and in general I just feel so much better as a human.

And it actually proves, I think it's really underrated that people actually eat healthy and do excercises... You know, just to get some fresh air here and there and not sit in front of the computer all the time... I think if you are feeling well in real life you actually play better in the game.

Just touching on the next game that you have here, in two days against Cloud9, the semi-final. What are your feeling about facing the North American side?

Actually, they impressed me by beating G2, I think everyone thought that G2 were going to win because they were the favorites, but then again, G2 has been playing pretty poorly in the last two weeks, also in Pro League at home, they are definitely not themselves right now. I think they need a little bit more time to figure out what is going on and then they will come back as always, because they have so many [good] individual players in that team. I think it's just a matter of time.

But yeah, the same goes for Cloud9, they have so many good individual players, I don't think you can pinpoint one guy that is not performing. So it's going to be tough. It's like playing FaZe Clan, like a little brother of FaZe Clan in my opinion. So many good players and you have to be on point with your own game. Also, their map pool is really strong, if you look at ours as well, I think we are going to have an interesting veto.