dennis: "[In officials] it feels like I'm playing a game I don't know how to play"

We spoke to Dennis "⁠dennis⁠" Edman on the topic of Ninjas in Pyjamas's showing so far in the second stage of the Major and his individual form.

With wins against NRG and HellRaisers and losses to Liquid and MIBR, Ninjas in Pyjamas are at a 2-2 record, waiting for their opponent for the fifth round, which will decide where they will advance to the playoffs or get eliminated 2-3 for the second time in a row.

We sat down with dennis to get his thoughts the team's confidence on Train, which they have played four times over the course of the two stages, losing on two of those occasions in one-sided fashion to Winstrike and MIBR. Currently sitting on a 0.81 rating in the New Legends Stage, the Swede also commented on his individual form, which has been a subject of his own Tweets as of late.

Compared to the previous stage, where you had quite a rough start, you got off to a better one now. What have been the improvements from the previous stage, what's different?

Actually, as a team we play better against better opponents usually. That's pretty much what happened here, as well. When we played Liquid, there were a few mistakes, weapon switch and such things which cost us the game pretty much, but there are always going to be mistakes from the team and the other team in the game, it happens. In the game yesterday [against MIBR], we had a bad start on Train, but on Inferno we got a bit fired up. I think if we won Inferno, we would have won Mirage as well.

Talking about Train, your results on it have been quite up and down, as you beat ViCi and Vega on it but also lost to Winstrike and against MIBR here. You seem to be confident enough to pick it a lot, but the results have been shaky, what do you make of that map in your pool now?

For myself, I'm not really confident on that map, but the team is, of course. I don't know, it's hard to say if it's a good map or a bad map for us, Train is Train, it's going to be good sometimes and it's going to be bad sometimes.

From talking to Lekr0 after the Winstrike loss, he said that there were differences in the team about letting Train through in that match, so was it you who wanted to keep away from it?

Actually, because they beat fnatic pretty badly before that, I did not want to play Train. I don't know about the rest, but that was my opinion (laughs).

On Inferno against MIBR, you were in a winning position with a 14-12 lead, but they came back with four in a row, why do you think you weren't able to close that one out?

When it was 14-12, I think we were going for a house pop, a house explosion round, and we missed the timing because the flash didn't pop. We went out from apps before the flash popped, so TACO just got the first kill when he wasn't blind and then he dropped when he was blind. If that flash popped before we went out, it would have probably been a different round.

You have been commenting on your own form on Twitter, especially yesterday after the MIBR match, what do you think some of those disappointing showings are down to?

It's hard to say because when we practice at home, when we practice here, I do really well, actually. I play very well. But as soon as I get on the server, I feel not confident at all and it feels like I'm playing a game which I don't know how to play. It's all in my head pretty much and I just have to find a way to get around it. If I do that, I think we're going to do well here.

How do you look at the competition in the fifth round now that we've learned most of the teams who will play in that 2-2 pool?

We're pretty confident, still. I'm also confident even though I suck right now. I think we're going to play like Cloud9, ENCE, or some team like that...

Vitality is also a possibility...

Yeah, true, true... We feel very confident against those teams, especially f0rest and REZ, they play really well right now and they are super confident against those teams, so that makes the others also very confident. I think we have a good chance at going to the playoffs.