valde: "We really want to get back into the Major cycle and failing at another Minor is not an option"

We talked to Valdemar "⁠valde⁠" Bjørn Vangså, whose North were knocked out of the ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals group stage after losses to FaZe and MIBR despite an opening BO1 win against Liquid.

North started off their run at the ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals with a best-of-one victory over Liquid on Dust2, but were unable to reach the playoffs as they were knocked down to the lower bracket by FaZe and then eliminated from the tournament in Montpellier by MIBR. Now, the Danes will go back home to prepare for one of their most important tournaments of the year, the Europe Minor for the StarLadder Major in Berlin.

During our talk, valde spoke of his growth as North's in-game leader and what he has been learning about the role, the progress the team is making and what they need to take the next step to become a solid playoff contender, and what's to come for the Danish team ahead of the EU Minor.

I was talking to NAF the other day, after you had beaten them in the opener and he was saying that playing North feels a little bit different since you started calling, and he was giving props to you guys. Can you tell me a bit about how that's going and how the team is changing?

Maybe he said it because I called him the best NA player in another interview [laughs], but you know, I think that to some degree he's right. I've tried to come in as a captain with a new style and a new approach to the game. For me, personally, it's continuous work because you don't become a good in-game leader in a month or two, and I'm well aware of it.

Actually, this is one of the events where I've learned the most because we played so many top teams and I think that I'm improving as a leader. I'm starting to realize what things you can or can't call against top teams, so it's just a lot of stuff regarding map control, strategies, how much anti-stratting you're supposed to do against various opponents... so yeah, it's a difficult process, but I can hopefully do a good job in the long run and I'm aware that it may not be perfect in the beginning.

What would you say is the biggest lesson you've learned so far?

When you're a new caller you tend to stress things and maybe become a bit tunnel visioned. So let's say we're playing Overpass and we can't get A control. You may start to just call the team towards B because you don't know any better, but as you learn and gain experience you start to realize that you need to have more map control before you can call certain strategies, and that's one of the main reasons we were looking a bit shaky at the beginning with me, but hopefully it will get better over time.

There's definitely progress being made. You haven't quite figured it out, you're not always making playoffs, but you seem to be getting there. While you may be missing some of the small things, you're also beating Liquid in a best-of-one... so where do you see the team right now? Do you see yourself making the next step soon?

Yeah, that's definitely our goal. I think one of the main reasons to be on a team is to improve and see the results, right? Otherwise, we wouldn't be playing. I'd say we're a borderline playoff team. We made playoffs at ECS and we almost made them in Dallas, we didn't because of the format, and here it was one round against FaZe, the anti-eco we lost on Long, we could have won Dust2 if we would have won that one single round. So you know, in my mind, it's one single round and three rounds against MIBR that decided if we got further into the tournament or not. This time the marginals just weren't on our side and that was unfortunate for us, but you can't complain if you lose games because in the end it's our own fault.

What do you think it is you need to find, or what do you need to click in order to make that jump?

We need a little more input...

What do you mean by input?

Some of our players need to learn how to handle high-pressure situations, they need to have the courage to make decisions in those split-decision rounds where everything is really close. We're going with the flow a little bit too much and we lose the overview of the rounds, which cost us a lot of crucial rounds at this event. Hopefully, when people get more experience, they'll dare to make the mid-round calls that I can't make because I'm on another part of the map. We need more experience because we have a lot of young guys and we're still kind of a new team, I'd say.

Looking forward, what do you have planned?

We've had a busy month, going tournament to tournament, and that has been really tough because you can't have the perfect playbook when you don't have time to evolve and adapt. We're going to have some days off to reflect on the past couple of months, then we have the Minor coming up and that's by far the most important tournament for us. We really want to get back into the Major cycle and failing at another Minor is not an option.

There are a lot of good teams going into the Minor, like mousesports or fnatic, to name a few... it's quite stacked. What do you think your options are?

We can compete with all of them and beat all of them if we play our best. The EU Minor has become a sort of a mini tier 1 event with so many good teams and it's going to be very tough. It's looking even harder than last time, and last time was already pretty hard. We're looking forward to it and may the best teams win.