chrisJ: "Just reaching the playoffs was not enough for us anymore"

We managed to sit down with Chris "⁠chrisJ⁠" de Jong and talk to MOUZ' in-game leader about their recent roster change and what it means for the team.

Fresh off adding a new player, Janusz "⁠Snax⁠" Pogorzelski, who replaced Martin "⁠STYKO⁠" Styk, MOUZ attended ESL One Cologne. The tournament didn't go as well as they would hope, though, as they were eliminated in the group stage with losses to G2 and ENCE.

In the exit interview, chrisJ explained that the roster move was made as they felt the team couldn't make the next step otherwise and consistently compete for titles, and that they hope Snax will be the x-factor they needed.

Tell me about how the roster change came to happen, was replacing STYKO something you actively thought about or was it a thing that you saw that there were good players available so you made the move?

I think I can speak for the whole team that we felt that we kind of lacked something to be the really best team, even fight for being one of the best teams now. Obviously, we had kind of a good run, people said that other teams were perhaps not playing so good and we took the opportunity, we won some tournaments, we were getting into the playoffs the whole time and we kept doing that with STYKO. We just felt that we needed something extra. Maybe it's an X-factor thing or something that we thought a player like Snax might have that could really give us the last edge we needed, to win big matches and to actually get to finals again and actually have a chance of winning them. Because we played FaZe a few times in finals and it got close, but we never beat them. And FaZe isn't even considered the best team right now, obviously, there is Astralis and we didn't usually even have much of a chance against them. We felt like with this lineup we couldn't improve much more. Even though we were good, just reaching the playoffs was not enough for us anymore, we wanted something more.

Obviously, you played a lot of events in the last two to three months. Was there maybe a thought that you just didn't have enough time to practice, add new things and stuff like that?

Certainly, some of our players were really not happy with how many events we attended, they said before it that we would not be good, that we would be ready for the first couple of events, but then when people realize how you play you have no time to create something new or practice much at home. That was certainly a problem and I feel that if we had practiced more we could've done better at some events... if it would have been enough, I guess we will never know now, but that's how it is.

You mentioned that you wanted to make the next step. Going back, when the roster with STYKO came together, mouz wasn't even considered a top team. I guess you went above everyone's expectations, but at the same time, you are at a point now that you feel like you can go even further? Is that the feeling you have right now?

Yeah, for sure, we had the taste of winning a couple of times now, so even though in old mouz rosters we would be kind of happy to even reach the playoffs, now it's like "OK, we are going to the playoffs again". It became a normal thing, we should always reach the playoffs and we want to do even more. We want to go and play in the finals again, at least, every tournament. That's obviously really hard now, so we just felt that with that roster it is not going to be possible. Maybe the training was also a problem, it could've helped us more, but we felt that even if we would've trained a lot more it probably wasn't going to be enough with this roster.

Talking about Snax as an X-factor, what do you see you as a team getting with him and what do you think you are losing? How do you see the balance there with the new player?

I think the people from the community, in general, talked a lot about STYKO being the support player, stuff like that. I would see it less as him being a total support, but Martin did really often sacrifice himself for the team in the sense of weaponry, if he had to go first he would always do it, he would always take any role that was left over because nobody wanted to play it, he had no problem doing that. That's obviously something that helps any team because you can make the stars play better, but now that we have Snax, he is actually going to play quite a lot of STYKO's positions but obviously he is not going to be so willing to totally sacrifice himself all the time, saying "OK, I'm going to save so you can have an AWP" or "I'm going to give you an M4 you give me an MP7", which Martin was always doing, so that's something we might lack now.

On the other hand, we feel like Snax is the more confident player, he is just way more experienced and really intelligent in these kinds of weird situations. He is famous for moving around in the smokes, where there is a lot of chaos and he finds a way to play it smart and play it well. That's something that is going to help, and it's not like he is not going to do any support stuff, in pistol rounds he is going to take nades, he is also used to doing that in VP, they bought a lot of nades in pistol rounds. It was usually only me or Martin that bought nades, so in that sense, Snax is ready to do those things that others aren't. oskar, suNny and ropz rather don't buy nades, sometimes they do but they are more like the guys we want to shine, we want them to get as much kills as possible. We will still try to make them our three main guys and Snax would be this bonus factor, I guess, together with me. We can also step up when needed, in these crucial moments.

Is there any worry that, since Snax, especially on the CT side, is a guy that can go and make plays on his own, that there will be a lack of balance with the three main stars? Not enough room for them to do what they want in certain times?

That might be a problem, I don't know, I don't feel like we have been playing that extremely aggressive, even though people say that we are playing very aggressive, I feel like we can play more aggressive, we will see how it works out.

For example, how did it work for this tournament, so far?

For this tournament, it obviously didn't go as well as we wanted (laughs), but we haven't practiced. I mean, we had one day. Snax has a lot of different ideas about how to play, we obviously don't really know about that, he doesn't know how we communicate, how I call things, how my teammates explain things. When you say something, you are expecting a certain reaction, right? He is used to talking in Polish, he knows English well enough to talk but obviously, he doesn't know all the terms that we are using in-game, that is something you have to learn and you are not going to learn it in one day of practicing five maps. We were really lacking in that sense, it is going to take time, but we are feeling like it's going to work out. We were practicing here in Cologne again, after we lost, and it went a lot better because we talked a lot more about what went wrong in the matches and pointed out issues we have right now, tried to fix them.

Snax obviously had a rough last year in Virtus.pro, but before that he was a top player, top5 three years in a row. From what you saw from him, does he still have the drive, the motivation to be what he was before?

I can't imagine that he was this motivated in VP and I can understand it, that team has obviously had its problems, I'm not going to go into detail about it because I don't know why exactly, but how he is working now, he comes off as really motivated, ready to work hard and come back into shape. We have to wait to see how it pans out, but we have a lot of trust in him.

Next stop is ELEAGUE, what's the plan for that, where do you see yourself having to improve for that event?

One thing we spoke about is that we just need to have this basic structure, so when we are playing standard rounds everyone knows what they can do and what we cannot do. Get the feeling of what you can expect from your teammates. You need to play a lot to get that, you need to play a lot of practice games. We are going to practice really hard for ELEAGUE, as soon as we come home we are going to start practicing basically every day, eight or more hours. We are going to be as ready as we can be with one week of practice. I personally think that with two weeks we would be really ready, but with one week we can do a lot of work, especially if we use the time in a good way, but not if it's a against worse opponents and we just do whatever we want, because we know we can headshot people if they are a worse team. We just need to play as we would play in matches and really learn from each other, how you need to react to your teammate and how you need to talk with him. That's the plan.