gla1ve: "I believe we can find the good old Astralis again"

On media day of the ECS Season 7 Finals, we caught up with Lukas "⁠gla1ve⁠" Rossander to talk about the team's current state, preparation for ECS S7 and recent social media flack.

Astralis have experienced a rough patch in recent times, as the team struggled at their latest two LAN events, the BLAST Pro Series stops in Miami and Madrid, the prior seeing a group stage exit, while the latter saw a 0-2 defeat against ENCE in the grand final. Additionally, the team has received flack from the community due to reduced tournament participation, further increasing the pressure on the shoulder of the Danes heading into the British event.

Prior to ECS Season 7 Finals' kick off, we spoke with the team's captain, gla1ve, who gave his thoughts on the team's recent descent to #2, broke down the mistakes made at the two recent-most BLAST events, spoke on social media pressure and the team's preparation for ECS.

Astralis were recently dethroned by Liquid following a 406-day-long reign as HLTV's #1 team. What are your thoughts on the news?

We are happy that we were at the top of the world ranking for such a long time, and we are really impressed by how we managed to stay there for such a long time. We knew that we had to work hard to stay there, and we did that. Now we are in second place, and we will do everything we can to get back on top, and hopefully stay there for some time again.

After the losses in Miami in Madrid, the team had a long period of time to break down what went wrong. Take us through the conclusions the team came to after these events.

Miami was a big disaster for us, we lost almost every game. We won the first two, and then we had a really bad Saturday, where we lost all of our games. That was not good.

Madrid went alright, we came to the final and lost to ENCE, and yeah, that's what happened. The BLAST format for us is not the best, because we like to prepare for our opponents a lot, and we're having a hard time doing that. There have been some ups-and-downs with how long in advance you know the opponents and how long before you know the map pick and such. In the final, you don't get any time to prepare, so that's what happens.

We didn't play well, to be honest. When I re-watched the game after, we just played really bad, we made so many mistakes. Of course, ENCE played well, and Aerial, especially, had a really good tournament and a good final, so they did well as well, and that is what made us play bad, but when I looked, we just played so bad, mainly tactically.

After the losses at consecutive BLAST Pro Series events, the team caught a lot of flack on social media because of results and the lack of event participation. How did the squad approach this period of time mentally?

We have read all the things people have been saying, and actually, we understand some of what they have said. When we look back at the past three months, we don't feel like they were the same three months as last year, so we understand where people are coming from. Still, at the beginning of the year, this is how we wanted our calendar to look.

Of course we have had talks about the things people have been saying on Twitter, with us not attending a lot of events. We have been talking about it, trying to discuss it, not hiding anything under the table. Now we just need to focus on the next three events.

We're here on the media day of ECS, with the main event kicking off on the 6th. Considering the period of time you've had before the event, do you feel prepared coming into London?

Yes. We have been practicing a lot, we had a bootcamp for five days at our office. We went through tactics a lot, spoke about what we need to scratch from our tactic book on different maps, what we need to keep and where we need to evolve. I think that helped us a lot. Now it's mainly about being there on the day, preparing really well and just killing our opponents.

Considering all of the things we just discussed in terms of your ranking drop, community pressure, etc, does the team feel an additional pressure to perform here in London?

Yes, of course, there is pressure, and I think there's even a little bit more pressure because of all the things going on on social media. We need to take into consideration how we're going to handle that. We have played with a lot of pressure before, and we actually know how to handle it. If we can play well on the day, and stay focused, throughout the whole day, I believe we will do well, but you never know. I feel like we haven't played the best lately.

We have ups and downs all the time, and we've had it a bit in practice as well. I think it has been better in practice the last few days, but I know that sometimes we are not the rock solid stone that we used to be, and we need to get back to that. That is what we are working on, and we need to handle the pressure.

In terms of the reasons behind why you feel off, would you describe it as a specific problem or more of a performance wave situation?

I think it's a wave of performance. You always go a bit up and down, and then you stabilise, followed by a bit more up and down. I think it's just what happens in everybody's careers, and right now it's just going a bit down for us, but I believe we can get back on top again really quickly, and I believe we can find the good old Astralis again. It's not like I feel like we lost it, I just feel like we're a bit shakier now. I still see glimpses of it in practice, and I actually saw it a lot in the past few days, so I'm looking forward to playing at ECS.

Speaking of which, you are paired with a difficult opponent in FURIA, and to add to this, it will be a best-of-one. Give us your thoughts on the match-up.

It's going to be an interesting match, I think they have been doing really well. I'm looking forward to seeing what map we're going to play - we have a lot of good maps that we both play, so it's going to be fun to see what map we're actually going to play.

I think they are a really good team, actually. They have good players, and I also know that MIBR have talked about some of their players in interviews. They have some huge talent, and I can't wait to play against them.