KRIMZ: "We are getting to know ourselves again, we started from scratch; now we're seeing some results"

Following his impressive performance against MIBR, we spoke to Freddy "⁠KRIMZ⁠" Johansson to discuss the rough start in Odense, his Dust2 frag record and the team's upcoming match against 100 Thieves.

fnatic kicked off their campaign in Denmark on a negative note, falling 3-16 to Evil Geniuses on Mirage. After this shortcoming, the Swedes went on to grind out two best-of-three victories against HEROIC and MIBR to secure a spot in the group's lower bracket final against 100 Thieves.

In this interview, KRIMZ talks about his record-breaking performance against MIBR on Dust2, the team's recovery from the bumpy start in Denmark, and the mental adjustments he has had to make in recent times.

We learned recently that the team has been focusing on the individual component. How have you been approaching practice and maintaining form?

We're practicing in a healthier way, but it's more the psychological stuff. Like, with resets, if we lose a bad round or something like that, it's like: "Screw that round, let's get the next one". It's really basic stuff, but I don't think everyone does it and it's the real fundamentals of Counter-Strike. You should already know those things, and, of course, we all do, but sometimes on the road, you forget about it. We are getting to know ourselves again, we started from scratch. Now we're seeing some results, at least.

You mentioned psychological adjustments, which are a notoriously difficult thing to implement. How did you do it?

It's hard to describe exactly what you do, but in my case it was frustration that was a key point that I had to fix or do something about. Of course, you can always get frustrated, but sometimes it can get a little bit too much, if you know what I mean. I've been working on that ever since, and other things as well, but that was the key thing that I really needed to work on. It's easy stuff like when I make a mistake, I blame myself or whatever; then you just try to reset and think happy thoughts (laughs), like: "Oh, I'll do this next round" or "I'm going to kill three people". Always stay positive.

The first match against EG on Mirage was a blowout, where nothing went your way. How did the team bounce back from that?

That was the first time with this team that we played a game where we were tired from the trip, not to blame that, you can't put the blame on it, but it had an effect on us. It was the first time we were coming into an event straight from another one. We talked about it afterward and said: "This is not us. Get your shit together and play the game you love". We didn't play much better the game after, it was a messy game, but we ground it out. We told ourselves: "This is not going to be a pretty day. It doesn't matter how the Counter-Strike looks from the outside, just grind it out and get through to the next day".

Speaking of the messy Heroic game, you had an uncharacteristic loss on Inferno, followed by a victory on Vertigo, which was your second time playing the map in officials. Then, Overpass was ground out with a 16-13 score. What was going on in that series?

On Inferno, I don't know what to say, it was just not our day yesterday. I think it was the worst day in our team's history and we haven't been around that long, so it was just a bad day and you could feel it and, obviously, see it as well. Overpass was the map where we stepped up a notch, but we still did not play to our normal level, I should say. We played a lot better team-wise, with flashes.

Your Vertigo record, as of the conclusion of this series against MIBR, is 3-0, with two wins over the Brazilians and one against Heroic. Is it a case of you being comfortable against MIBR on the map, or would you say this is a result of the map pool expansion that the team has been working on?

We're comfortable on it against any team. We have to play all seven maps, we wanted to be more Astralis-like, because they play all seven maps and it's a good veto advantage. Many teams don't play Vertigo and it's a big advantage to have. Other than that I don't want to say too much about it, but we're pretty good on it.

We have to discuss your performance on Dust2 where you broke the world record for frags in regulation. You landed 44 frags against MIBR - are you excited about the new record?

We lost the map, so it doesn't matter that much (laughs).

There must have been a degree of frustration on Dust2, all things considered. Why wasn't the team able to close out consider your outstanding performance?

I think I made some really good individual plays and made some really bad plays - we all did. Many of my shots hit their head, so not much to say about that.

You're now facing 100 Thieves for a spot in the quarter-finals. How does the team stack up against the Aussies?

I think we lost to them at StarSeries Season 8 last time, so we want to get some revenge. I think it's going to be a really close game, actually. We have a similar map pool and I think it will be three good maps for both teams.