f0rest: "StarSeries is going to determine how well we can do in the Minor"

We talked to Patrik "f0rest" Lindberg on the quarter-finals day to hear his evaluation of NiP's disappointing result in Dallas and ask about the looming Major cycle.

Ninjas in Pyjamas finished ESL Pro League Season 7 Finals in the last place, after they lost to SK in overtime on Inferno and 0-2 to the new OpTic in the lower bracket of Group B.

The whole team came to the press area on the quarter-finals day and we seized the opportunity to talk to Patrik "⁠f0rest⁠" Lindberg about the disappointing result. We also asked the veteran about the beginning of the Major cycle, which is coming up in June with the Europe Minor qualifiers:

You guys are clearly disappointed with your showing here, so tell me about what your general evaluation of the event is and what you think went wrong.

I think the conclusion we gather as a team for the past week, even before coming to this tournament, is that we're really lacking - which is kind of weird - the communication, it's not nearly where we want it to be. We're doing a lot of, in my opinion, rookie mistakes, mistakes that shouldn't happen at this level and communication issues that shouldn't even happen.

That's something that we've all gathered that that is one of the biggest problems we have at the moment and we're now really working hard to make sure that is on point before going to Starladder, which is only a week away. That is something we're going to do, keep practicing on the communication and how we approach the communication, what information is needed to be told and how we just communicate in general.

Your SK match could have gone either way since it ended up going to overtime, but you really dropped the ball against OpTic, particularly on the first map, what did you make of them as a new team?

It's hard for me to assess where OpTic are standing as a team because I don't even know where we're standing as a team. But they were shooting hard, cajunb really came up huge, they have a lot of strong individual players that could really go off easily in a game. We sure had a hard time playing against them on Mirage and Inferno was a bit closer.

It's interesting to see that the Danish scene can provide such strong teams, I think they have four different teams now that are really close contenders to being in the top-10, and that's really interesting in itself. I think OpTic will only improve from here, they just added Snappi and JUGi and I'm interested to see how far they can go.

What really is the goal for the next period before the Major cycle begins considering the busy schedule you will have?

We just want to make sure we get comfortable enough. Since we had such a great start when dennis joined, we had made playoffs and all that, this is really the first tournament where we felt off as a team and that is something that needs to get fixed pretty damn soon because of all the tournaments.

It's just going to be back-to-back-to-back, so what we're looking for here is definitely making the playoffs and, hopefully, we can grab a few trophies just to get the confidence rolling. I know we have the individual talent to do so, it's just that we need to figure out the small issues we have at the moment, and that is something that's going to be key for the upcoming tournaments before the Minor starts.

Touching on the Minor and the whole cycle again, it's been a while since you managed to make it to the offline portion, is this something you begin to worry about now that it's looming again?

As you stated, we've missed quite a few now. I don't really worry too much, I never worried before either, it's just that it went how it went and all we can do from now, we've changed a lot of players, we're trying out a different style, and I know dennis's confidence as a player and as an in-game leader to be able to go through without a problem.

Hopefully, we can all keep that mentality, but at the same time, there are a lot of strong teams in Europe right now, even for the lower tier, Counter-Strike is reaching a point where it's really, really close in general. This tournament that is coming up is going to determine how well we can do in the Minor. My gut feeling is telling me that it shouldn't be a problem; I've stated that before as well and you saw how that went, so... That's how I'm feeling right now.