AZR: "Leading into 2020 I would like for us to be achieving trophies"

Aaron "⁠AZR⁠" Ward reflects on recent LAN results and details specific in-game issues and 100 Thieves' ambitions going into 2020.

100 Thieves are likely to end 2019 at No.7 in the world rankings, six places up from their ranking of 13th at the end of 2018, after enjoying their best year yet, despite some ups and downs along the way.

The Australian team reached the playoffs stages of both Majors and, upon joining 100 Thieves, made their first-ever appearance in a Big Event final, at IEM Beijing, before losing out to Astralis. They were unable to capitalise on that momentum, however, as they crashed out of the ESL Pro League Season 10 Finals in the last round of the group stage after losing to eventual runners-up fnatic.

But despite his team going out with a whimper, AZR still believes that the year was mostly positive and that the time has come to raise the bar and start challenging for trophies.

"I think in 2019 we had a really good year," he told HLTV.org in Odense. "We had some decent placings at the Majors and we even came close to finishing at the top. Leading into 2020 I would like for us to be achieving trophies, that would be the main goal for sure.

"We're sort of breaching top five at the moment, we're sitting fifth in the world rankings [Editor's Note: the team have since slipped down to seventh], so we're pretty happy with that but we want to keep pushing further, and I think the trophies are the next step and that's what we want to start bringing home."

After the defeat to Astralis in the Beijing final - which, according to AZR, the players used as a lesson about the importance of minimizing mistakes in the game -, 100 Thieves had a ten-day bootcamp leading up to the Pro League Finals. Confidence was running high as the team traveled to Odense, so the early exit came as a letdown to the players, especially to the in-game leader, who missed out on the opportunity to play in front of his girlfriend at the tournament's main arena.

"We were obviously quite confident, we had a pretty good bootcamp too, so that helped a lot," AZR said. "I would have liked us to be in the top four. Getting pushed out 7th-8th was quite a disappointing result.

"Also, my girlfriend is from Denmark and her family was going to be here too, so it was a little bit of a disappointment not to be on stage for them."

Prior to the elimination match against fnatic, 100 Thieves had been sent to the group's lower bracket by Evil Geniuses, who were kryptonite for the Australians all year long. The last six matches between the two teams ended in defeat for AZR's side, something that he hopes will change next year.

"For us as a team playing against EG - they're a great team, nothing to take away from them - but I think there's a mental block in our team when we play against them," AZR explains. "We don't seem as confident and don't seem as loud energy-wise versus them. I think we're not playing against them at our full capacity and that's something we need to look at for ourselves because we don't seem as strong against them.

"I've tried this in the past against other teams, where we try to be as loud as possible to begin with, just so we're not going into the game cold. It's easier said than done, you can say. Against them, we have always just had a rough time, so we've got to figure that shit out ourselves and hopefully, leading into next year, we'll have some stuff to do with our new mental coach. He'll have stuff to say, for sure, so we'll implement that and, hopefully, we can get over that hurdle.

"We haven't met the new mental coach yet, so it will be interesting to see what he's like and getting to know him at the beginning of next year."