GeT_RiGhT: "We've been working our asses off with this core and we want to be successful together"

We talked with Christopher "⁠GeT_RiGhT⁠" Alesund following Ninjas in Pyjamas's qualification for the playoffs of IEM Sydney to hear his thoughts on the return of Dennis "⁠dennis⁠" Edman, Ninjas in Pyjamas's form, and their failure at ESL Pro League.

The Swedish side overcame eUnited in a BO1 and then the Renegades in a BO3 during the first day of IEM Sydney to secure an upper-bracket final match against Liquid and a spot in the playoffs. Ninjas in Pyjamas have therefore quickly bounced back from a disappointing ESL Pro League outing, where they finished last behind FaZe, HEROIC, and devils.one.

At the end of the day, we spoke to the 28-year-old and heard how dennis seems to have rediscovered his passion for the game, what that means for the team, and what GeT_RiGhT's role in everything is.

You got the first two wins, that makes you qualified for the playoffs already, on the first day. I guess that means your first goal here is already achieved, what are your thoughts on it?

Yeah, we don't really generally like speaking about what our goals are and what not, and that can sound very strange for people to hear, but because we had a rough time we don't want to go in with too high expectations. At Shanghai we were super happy to get to the playoffs, that was the goal for that one and then we bombed out directly against Renegades. Everyone has their own individual goals, for me, personally, for this tournament, I wanted to make it to the playoffs and then I have like four more steps. But of course, quarters are quarters, it is nice to be playing in front of the Australian crowd, I heard they are nuts so I'm looking forward to it. But we are not satisfied and we are looking forward to playing against Liquid.

dennis came back pretty quickly in the end, just looking at it from the outside, statistically, he is doing better than before the break, but how is it inside the server? What is it like talking with him, playing with him?

Having dennis back in the team is nice because of a lot of different reasons. draken is a way different player to dennis, and it reflects way differently on how the system works in our team. So it is nothing against draken himself, we even talked to him about it, we thought it would be more tournaments, we were very surprised dennis could come back this early, but we are also very happy to have him back in the team because we've been working our asses off for a long time with this core and we want to be successful together. We don't want to change anyone out and what not, but you never know, after a lot of tournaments, if draken is performing very well, we perform very well with him, you never know about it. But in I think that in the back of our minds we thought that we were going to have a stand-in for quite a while, and then when dennis feels ready he is going to come back into the team.

Going back to the question of dennis coming back, we were so surprised by how different he was, at least me personally. Because I know he has been having a difficult time for quite a while, and after we stopped practicing and going to tournaments with him, I was just happy to hear his voice again and hear how happy he was. It is not a completely new person, but you hear and feel something different, that he feels happier in a way. That is something I, as a friend of his, and as he is someone I know for such a long time, am super happy about, that he came to a point that he felt better. I felt very bad for him because of the situation that was happening to him. At the end of the day it is about health and I think everyone is so happy to have him back in a way that is even better than before.

In the past you also had some periods where you were playing badly, you had a lot of criticism coming your way, I think that you were even vocal about it, not feeling that great about it. How can you avoid that in the future, personally or any player in your team?

I can only speak for myself, and for the moment and the past couple of months, of course, I'm not satisfied with my own performance, but I feel I'm doing better in other ways, ways I haven't done before. So I have seen more positive sides which I haven't seen [earlier]. Maybe not more kills and stats and whatever it is that people are complaining about, I hear it and I see it, you know, but I try to always stay as positive as possible. It just hurts me every time we lose, that makes it tougher when you haven't performed at all. But at the same time, the guys are accepting for the player I am and what I bring to the table and I'm just super happy with that, to be honest.

I'm super happy to have such a great team, welcoming me with open arms with the performance I'm giving to them. Because we see the system as it is, and they believe in it and I believe in it. If no one was believing in it then I would probably not be here anymore. So I'm very happy about that. I think it is just very important for people to know that CS is a team game at the end of the day, and if f0rest has to have 30 kills every game to make us win... then we have to do it like that and we have to try to help him as much as possible. My goal is to help everyone else before myself, that is the number one rule for me.

Touching on dennis coming back and draken leaving, obviously when you had draken you wanted to adapt to having a full-time AWPer but now you are back to not having one. How has that whole process affected you as a team? Did you keep anything from the draken style of play, are you mixing it up?

No, I think we stayed kind of the same as we were before draken joined the team, we weren't focusing too heavily on having an AWPer in the team. Of course, it is a way different approach to the game when you have a full-time AWPer instead of a full-time rifler and someone that is picking it up from time to time, but we believe in what we have and we really believe that it is going to work eventually. We just have to put in more time and thinking into it. I think it is going to be quite interesting to watch NiP for the next couple of months.

Before this you were at ESL Pro League, that didn't go that well, you ended up in relegation and on paper it wasn't such a tough group, at least to finish second or third. So what went wrong there that worked out here, where you are playing pretty well?

I can't really speak about it at the moment, it sounds weird to give that answer but I think we went in with the wrong mentality, that is the insight I can give into it. I think that the mentality right now is much better than it was before. We will see how this tournament goes, the next ones and so on. We will take it one step at a time.