Lekr0: "We are working on me not having to make a call every round and every mid-round"

Jonas "⁠Lekr0⁠" Olofsson spoke to HLTV.org during the BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen media day and shared his thoughts on his new approach to in-game leading, the addition of Björn "⁠THREAT⁠" Pers, and Patrik "⁠f0rest⁠" Lindberg's form.

The Swedish team have managed respectable results since the Major, currently sitting 12th in the rankings after qualifying for the ECS S8 Finals and making playoffs at StarSeries i-League Season 8 and DreamHack Masters Malmö. Still, no deep tournament runs have been achieved since the addition of Simon "⁠twist⁠" Eliasson, something Ninjas in Pyjamas are hoping to change in Denmark.

To hear more about the team's current form, we spoke to the team's IGL, Lekr0. The 26-year-old revealed that they are trying to give everyone in the team more responsibility and that twist and f0rest have been the two players helping with the mid-round calling the most.

Since the Major and the changes happening, you have had some ok results, making playoffs but without really deep runs. Where do you think you are as a team right now?

I think we are breaking into the top 10, for sure. Maybe we can even get up to 7th-8th right now, but I still think we need to show the good side we have shown in some matches, but in some games we just fall flat and look really bad. We need to find where we play well and improve on that.

Why do you think you fall flat in some of these matches, has that been something you have been discussing, figuring out?

Yeah, we discussed and watched the games after StarSeries. We played two very good games against FURIA and EG and then against G2 and the EG rematch, we played really badly. I think we played fairly ok against MIBR, still could've done better, but against EG and G2 I think we had really bad communication, we stressed our executions, we didn't take our time, everything had to go fast, fast, fast.

Talking about executions, THREAT has joined the team as the strategic coach, how has that been working out so far?

It has been going well. He has some executes we've been practicing, we haven't put in that much time yet because I think he was supposed to start in NiP in November, at the beginning, but he started working with us a bit earlier, but not in a full capacity yet. Next month we are going to meet him and talk to him through practice.

How did that even come to happen? Where did the idea to add THREAT as the secondary coach come from?

I think it mainly came from the organization, they felt that we needed a second coach to help us out, both in-game and out of the game, so I think it is really good to have two coaches to help us.

You are in-game leading now, but from what I remember, there was a period where GeT_RiGhT was doing some of that. How is that role sitting with you right now, how do you feel as an in-game leader?

I feel kinda comfortable being the in-game leader, sure, it has not been my main role from the beginning, but I think I'm getting there to becoming comfortable in it and still being able to play my own game. I've been focusing on both calling and playing well individually, focusing on my own game a bit, so we are trying to give some responsibilities in the rounds, so if people notice something wrong in the opponents' game, they should call it and say "Hey, there is an opening here". We are working on me not having to make a call every round and every mid-round, having the other guys helping me communicate has been really good and it has been helping me a lot as well.

I think that a lot of teams nowadays, even if they have a primary in-game leader, there is always someone who is the mid-round caller, who helps the most. Is there someone in your team that is stepping up and doing the majority of the secondary calling?

Yeah, we had f0rest doing the most of the mid-round calling and helping out there, and once we got twist, we noticed that he is really good at communicating and he has been talking really well in rounds, he has been helping out as well. It is usually me having the last call if they have two calls or if I have a call I'll just decide which one I think is the best, but it is really nice having many voices in the team that I can listen to.

Obviously f0rest had a very poor Major and people were skeptical about what was going on, if he could he recover, and now we saw that the last three tournaments he played he did really well again. How was it from your perspective, seeing the dip in form and then the resurgence of f0rest?

It was just one fluke event for him, I had never seen f0rest play badly before for a whole event. It was something that happened one time, there was stuff going on outside of the game, many things had happened, he had become a father as well, there were a lot of things going on, I didn't even think about him losing form or anything like that. I was never worried, I know he can perform, it was fine.

What are your expectations here? You are almost qualified for the Global Finals, things have to go really bad for you to not go there. Other than that, what is on your mind and what do you want to accomplish here?

I want to make it to the final, for sure. I think the last two BLASTs we were one and two rounds away from making the final, so that kind of sucked. But I really hope we can make the final here because we have been playing many quarter-finals and not making it further, that has been tough on us. So I really hope we can make the final, and hopefully win.