Bubzkji: "When I came into Tricked I instantly performed, so I gained the trust that I can do my own stuff"

To round out our live coverage of V4 Future Sports Festival, we spoke to the tournament's Most Valuable Player, Lucas "⁠Bubzkji⁠" Andersen.

The 21-year-old gave us some insights into the grand final against Virtus.pro, in which Tricked came back from a loss on Mirage to win Nuke and Train, where the Danish side continued their struggles with closing out matches as the match went from 14-3 to double digits.

Bubzkji also commented on his improvement as an individual player from his time with his previous team, Fragsters, as well as on how the team managed to recover from the loss of Johannes "⁠b0RUP⁠" Borup during the player break in August.

Let's first talk about the final itself. It was the same three maps that you guys played against Virtus.pro in the group stage, as well as in the previous encounter two months ago at GGL - was there no talk about trying to switch it up this time?

No, the problem with VP is that their permaban is Overpass and we would like to play it against them if it was possible, but they keep doing the same thing, so we're kind of forced to play the same maps because we don't want to play Inferno versus them. It's always going to be the same maps, but I feel like we always have the upper hand on them, at least on Nuke we always win, it's such a comfort pick. When we win Nuke every time we don't really want to switch it up and they just keep on picking Mirage even though they lost it last time.

Talking about Nuke, like you say it had been quite one-sided previously, but this time it was an eco win at 10-10 that swung it your way. Could it have gotten dangerous without that?

It's a CT-sided map, so of course we would still have the upper hand, I think, but they punished us really hard. We didn't really expect them to play around the vents because they didn't do it last time, and they had a very good read on us on the T side, as well.

This tournament you've had some problems closing matches and that happened again on Train, what happened?

Even though they're not a very experienced team either, a lot of new guys, you can feel we're stressing a lot in situations like that 14-3, where they had like five scouts on B and we just kept peeking one-on-one, just rookie mistakes all the time, which makes it very close in the end.

You played two series in a row because you played that second semi-final, which is something the big teams used to complain about a lot - did you feel that affect you at all when the series went into the late stages?

I think we actually had the upper hand - I don't think it's good either, to play two series in a row, but I think we had an upper hand versus VP due to the fact that they played in the morning, so they were up early and then they had to go for like a four-hour break, where you can't really prepare for anything because you don't know who you're meeting. But we were up there warming up, we slept to 11-12, getting rested, talking about everything, so yeah.

You've managed to win your first international title despite losing a key player in b0RUP only last month, how did you manage to recover from that setback so quickly?

b0RUP was an amazing player for us, he was probably the best player in the team, he was playing a lot of good roles and he was playing them very well. But after he disappeared, I think roeJ is taking a more chilled way of playing his role, he's not playing them as aggressively as b0RUP did, he's just playing more on flashes, while b0RUP was just really, really good individually. It's a different player in the end.

It's also your first MVP, of course. Since your Fragsters days you've been looking much improved, can you tell me about why and what the award means to you?

This means everything, of course, I play to win and getting the credit of being the MVP at this event is a step in the direction of becoming one of the best in the world. I've been a better player since Fragsters, that would be stupid not to say it like that, but the difference is that we were five players who were taking a lot of space. stavn was a star player himself, he's now in Heroic, dragonfly was a really, really aggressive AWPer, refrezh, the star of the team back then, he was taking a lot of space, as well. So, I was kind of left in this spot where I would just fill a bit with torben, we didn't really play around me or torben, we just played around mostly stavn and dragonfly and refrezh, and that's what's the difference between that and Tricked. When I came in, I instantly performed, so I gained that respect and the trust that I can do my own stuff.

This win could prop you up to somewhere close to invites to some bigger events, how do you make sure that you keep improving from here and stay on the level of the teams that you could start meeting more from now on?

Maybe it will sound a bit arrogant, but I feel like we played better than many of the teams we played this event except mouz. We know we're a really good team, looking at practice, etc., and we play really well online, as well, beating Heroic 2-0... We're not really getting the invites to prove ourselves and now we've had a lot of practice time for this event, so that is probably the difference. We don't really get invites so often, so it's kind of hard to let upsets happen. We're sometimes at a DreamHack Open, but it's hard to make an upset there when all the teams are closely ranked to you, it's not a surprise when we beat AVANGAR three months ago, and now they were in the Major final. I think that's one of the reasons why it happened now.