Golden: "What we achieve mostly depends on how we develop, how fast we develop, and how we can adapt to my idea of the game"

We chatted with Maikil "⁠Golden⁠" Selim during the media day at BLAST Pro Series Madrid to catch up on all things Cloud9.

Cloud9 came into BLAST Pro Series Madrid as one of the underdog teams. After the first day of play, Golden & co. scraped by Giants in a 30-round Dust2 and lost to Natus Vincere, 16-7, in their second best-of-one of the day. In today's matches, they will have to face Astralis, ENCE, and Ninjas in Pyjamas.

In the interview, conducted before the first couple of matches in Madrid, Golden talked about getting the team up to speed, trying to find a complete playstyle, bringing Soham "⁠valens⁠" Chowdhury back as head coach, and spending time on the sidelines and what he learned from his time away from the game, among other topics.

You've had a bit of time with the team now. In Miami everything was more rushed, so how are things starting to work out?

Things are moving, it's going in the right direction. We just had a very efficient one-week bootcamp in Copenhagen. We tried to get down the fundamentals, the basics for the team to build on. We never had this opportunity before. Or we did, but now I feel like we've learned so much from the past roster and the changes that we have a way of doing it, and that's the most important thing we got out of this bootcamp.

Are you creating some stability now, with you having stepped away, and the team going through so many players... Do you think you can find some calmness? Have you been able to find your game?

Yeah, for now. You're touching on a good point. I actually can't find my game yet, I have to find the team's game before I can find my own, although we've somewhat found the way we ideally want to play.

Tell me a bit about coming in to lead this team. You've played with some of the players, others you haven't. How is it coming together? Is it a group you believe can grow and play the CS that you want them to?

I would say yes and no. We have to find something in-between, there's a Swedish word for it, "lagom," which means not too much or not too little. We need to find a way for everyone to be in the middle, I would say. We're trying to find that, I can't really say more than that for now.

You spent some time away from the game, you had to deal with some health issues. Can you tell me what you learned and what came out of that? Perhaps how you grew as a person, outside of the server?

To put it simply, I would say that I appreciate everything I have now more than I did before. Even if I already appreciated things before, now it's to an extent that I think "what if?" It's much different, I'd say I've become much more reflective over everything. I don't know if I'm sure I can put it into words, and I'm not sure if I want to, either, so I'll just say that.

Do you think it's something positive for your career?

Yes, for sure, it's a good thing. I have always been thinking about my decisions and how things have gone, my past, and I think this will help me. It's unfortunate, but I've learned so much from it.

You had a couple of good maps and a couple of bad maps in Miami. Is there a goal here to maybe get a couple of better maps? Or maybe not even about the maps, but rather the way you play. What is it you want to see out of the team?

There are some things we've been practicing, and of course, I can't go into details, but I'll say that it's definitely something we'll be looking into translating on LAN. Obviously, our map pool is much different than in Miami, we're playing Nuke now, we're playing all of the maps, so it's different.

One of the other big news that happened is that you brought valens back. How did that go down?

valens is probably one of the smartest people I know. He's very calm and the way he handles stuff is very unique, I really enjoy working with him and I'm glad he's back. I can't really get into how Rambo left, maybe another time, but I'm just really glad to have valens back in the team. He has always been with us, even when he wasn't our head coach, he was always there helping out, every practice. He had some stuff to take care of and can't be here this time, but he will be back at future events.

Having played with this team a little while, what do you think your ceiling is? What can you achieve in the long run?

What we achieve mostly depends on how we, as players, develop, how fast we develop, and how we can adapt to my idea of the game. That's the biggest thing, I'd say, all be on the same page and play the same way, if we can do that I think we'll be a really good team. That takes time, though, so I can't say anything for sure now.

Is it something you're struggling with, getting everyone to understand the game your way? Is this anything that happened in the past with fnatic?

No, in fnatic... I'm not sure, this is my point of view, but I don't think we shared differences in-game. It was mostly confidence and them wanting Xizt for a long time. Obviously, I had some flaws, but I don't know what to say about that... [laughs] I honestly don't! I don't know where I'm going with that. I have no idea! [laughs] I love the fnatic guys, we were mostly on the same page.

So this is a different issue.

It's an issue of... Playing with me is a bit looser, I'm trying to find... Okay, I won't say what I'm trying to find, but I'm looser. I'm not trying to control everyone, and not everyone likes to be controlled, the majority of the team wants to play very loose. And actually, it's not just being loose, it's finding the perfect balance.

A style you can use to adapt to other teams if you need to...

Yeah, what I told the guys is that I want to find the complete playstyle. That's now something we need to figure out along the way with the team we have.

How long do you think it will take to find yourself playing this style, or at least close to it?

Probably six months of practice. We'll find what's working and it will be enough time for the players to develop as well.