aizy on criticism: "It's never easy to be the hated team or to get so much backlash"

After North concluded their run in Odense we spoke with Philip "⁠aizy⁠" Aistrup to discuss the team's varying playstyles over the years, changes that came with Nicklas "⁠gade⁠" Gade taking over as in-game leading and projections for Sevilla.

North were one of the first teams to crash out in Odense following defeats to Liquid and ATK. With pressure mounting, the Danish side seek redemption at DreamHack Open Sevilla, their final event of the year.

During media day in Odense, aizy reminisced on past in-game leaders and the systems they employed, and spoke on which set-up he thought was optimal and why it wasn't applicable in the team's current iteration. Additionally, the Dane gave a breakdown of the team's showing on home soil and shared his thoughts and ambitions for DreamHack Sevilla.

You are the longest-standing member of North, and over the years you've played under several in-game leaders in MSL, valde, cadiaN and now gade. Could you reflect on the journey and how it has been playing under a variety of captains and playstyles?

I've been with North for almost three years now, so I've experienced different styles of play and structure. I think we started out with MSL, who was very structured and then we got more and more loose with cadiaN, and now gade.

Now we're with gade and he's still very inexperienced as a leader. It's a new thing for him and he has to get used to the role and the pressure. It's not something that's going to get better overnight, it's going to take a while and we all know that, even though it's annoying not to win. Everybody wants to win, but you have to have patience.

Of the playstyles that you have played under, which do you think is optimal for the team?

Well, results have been better with the structure, but everyone has their own feeling for the game and how we think we should play. It also depends on gade and the way he likes to call. You can't really force a playstyle that he doesn't like, because then it's going to be bad in the long-run.

But yeah, results-wise, we do better playing structured and I think we're going to go home and look at our game. We still practice a lot and try to fix our stuff, but it's difficult sometimes when you have a loose playstyle, because it means that everyone has to be on their A-game every time we play.

Could you touch on specific in-game adjustments that came with gade taking over as an in-game leader?

We're just trying to get everyone to feel comfortable in their role - that's the most important thing. If you're not comfortable, you're not going to be confident, and in the long-run you're just going to be losing your confidence and that's pretty much everything in CS. We're still working out roles and positions etc. Even though we've played with gade for a while now, we're still early in the process. We're trying out a lot of stuff and seeing if it works and what fits for people, because everyone is really open-minded, so everyone can do everything. We're still working on it.

From watching you play it was apparent that player input is welcomed, and everyone was vocal, but Kjaerbye specifically seems to be stepping up the communication game. Is it a case that he's taken on more responsibility individually or is the team generally trying to improve communication?

When you're playing a more loose style, it means that everyone has to take more responsibility and be on their A-game; I just think he kind of adapts to it. Everyone is helping out and even though we don't have the results right now, everyone is trying and working really hard. That's the most annoying thing as well - we are putting a lot of hours into it and when it doesn't work, it's just so frustrating.

Briefly on the matches that were played out in Odense - the initial pairing against Liquid saw Vertigo left over and it's no secret that they've played the map as of late. Did the team prepare for that map specifically ?

They haven't looked that strong on Vertigo; they had picked it against Astralis at the ECS Finals, so we already had a plan that we were going to play it. We couldn't really change the plan because we practiced and prepared for it. We knew it wasn't their best map and we had been working hard on it. Actually, we have been pretty good on it in practice, so we wanted to try it out and go in as a dark horse, as we hadn't really played the map before. We wanted to surprise them, and I think they were surprised. Obviously we couldn't close it out because we still need a lot of experience on the map, because there's a big difference between practice and official games, as people play differently.

It's unfortunate, because I think we had a lot of good situations in the game, and we could've won it if we had just closed out a lof the rounds we threw away.

ATK was a team that surprised at this event in general, but the series against you was one-sided in their favour. From an observer's standpoint it seemed like you struggled with their aggressive playstyle, would you agree?

It's hard to say exactly what went wrong and how we lost, but yeah, they were actually really good and they had a lot of good stuff on different maps. We didn't underestimate them, we don't underestimate anyone. We knew they were good because everyone here is here for a reason. I just think they were way better on the day than we were and they had a lot of good tactics, small stuff and details that they had under control. Kudos to them, they played really well and I won't take anything away from them. They even went on to beat G2.

We weren't there on the day, and it sucks because it was pretty one-sided. They're playing aggressively and they're not afraid of taking duels. That's the scary part about an underdog team, they have nothing to lose.

Results haven't been great for North for some time, which has led to negativity on social media. At this point it has been going on for a while - how does the team deal with this?

You learn to block it out, and if you can't it's just going to affect you mentally too much and bring you down. We're getting a lot of hate right now, and I get why, but it's never easy to be the hated team or to get so much backlash. People are expecting a lot from us, though I don't know why because we are pretty low in the rankings and haven't had good results in a while.

But to answer your question, you can't do much other than block it out. You can't really answer back, there's no point.

The team has DreamHack Sevilla to look forward to now. What's the approach to the event and has the team set any expectations for it?

We're going to go home and look at our games from here to see what went wrong and work hard on fixing issues. It's limited how much we can do with practice, but the expectation, at least mine, is to win it. If we want to gain some confidence before the break, it's now, and I think it's a good opportunity to at least start to crawl back into the top 10; winning will not be enough, but it would be a good start.