Lekr0: "[Winning IEM Katowice] was huge for me and my confidence"

fnatic are therefore in the semi-final, where they were expected by many to face Cloud9. However, the American team was upset by TeamOne who will be the next opponents of Robin "⁠flusha⁠" Rönnquist and co.

Lekr0 feels that it can be difficult to face a lot of underdogs

Following the quarter-final, we talked to Jonas "⁠Lekr0⁠" Olofsson about winning IEM Katowice, his first premier tournament, the time off between events and WESG.

First off, I wanted to get your impressions of winning in Katowice. That was a week ago, but still fairly fresh, so how was it lifting the big trophy and getting the big title?

It was an amazing feeling and it showed me and the team that we can win titles and stuff like that. It's my first tier 1 win at an event, ever, and it was my first final as well. So it was huge for me and my confidence. It was really nice.

As you mentioned, your first grand final, playing against FaZe that are arguably the best team in the world right now, they have the number one spot at least. Was there any additional pressure playing that match, comparing it to other playoff games?

It didn't really feel like we have a lot of pressure, since it was a BO5 we had a slight advantage in the map pool, at least it's how it felt for me. But we thought that they would probably win Overpass, however, we won that, so it made easier for us to have an upper hand.

You only had a couple of days at home before this tournament, so what was that time used for?

The time we had between tournaments was used mostly for individual practice and stuff you had to do personally. We didn't practice anything between the events since there were so few days, so we just played individually and dealt with stuff we had to, kind of.

What was the mentality coming into WESG? Obviously, it's not Katowice, it's not the Major, but it's still not a DreamHack Open, the prize pool is huge. Can you give me some of your thoughts on the tournament coming here?

It's a really big prize pool, so of course, you take it seriously, but it doesn't feel like a normal ESL tournament where you play against all of the top teams. I think it's almost harder to play this event because you play so many underdogs who are really hyped to play a top team. Maybe we have the opposite feeling, we are not as hyped as when we play FaZe or whatever. So I think it's a tough tournament for us, but it's a good experience still.

Kind of recapping the group stages, you finished both of them as first out of your groups. Is there any match in particular that comes to mind that was difficult, someone that caught you off guard?

I think the toughest match was probably against AGO, I don't think we were really ready for how they were going to play. The Cache game was really tough, we are not so strong on that map, we can play it sometimes really good and sometimes really bad. And that was a bad day and they played really well so there was nothing we could do.

Let's touch on the MVP game, especially the first map. You were in the lead, but they pushed you into overtime, and that was on Mirage, a map that is pretty good for you. What were they doing so well?

I honestly felt that we outplayed ourselves, we had an idea of how they played all the time, since as T we got the mid control pretty much free every time, they played one shadow, one ticket booth, and one jungle practically every round. And the guy short played aggressively every round so I think we probably could've used the information a bit better, we were caught off guard when we shouldn't have been, that was the main issue I think.

Closing it off on Inferno, 16-3, did it relieve some pressure that the series could get complicated at one point?

We know we are good on Inferno, so I think everyone was pretty confident. And Jumpy talked to all the players and told us to stop being afraid, play like we usually do... (laughs) he lectured us a bit. I think that was good for us before the second map, everyone was hyped up and ready to go again instead of being titled from a bad game before.

Moving forward to the semi-final, do you feel like you are the favorites, that you should take it here?

It's a tough game, we probably play Cloud9, unless TeamOne pull of an upset against them, but I think we have a good chance of winning the whole tournament if we beat Cloud9. That's how I feel.