karrigan on EPL group: "We, FaZe and G2 are the main favorites, but I don't see all three making it"

In his latest interview with ESL Pro League players, James "⁠BanKs⁠" Banks sat down with Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen, who rated MOUZ' chances in the group and discussed the recent upsets in the league, the results in Katowice and the communication issues in an international team.

The European mixture will begin its defense of the Pro League Season 10 trophy on Saturday, against karrigan's former team of FaZe. It will mark MOUZ' return to action after a month without any official matches following the group stage exit at IEM Katowice.

There has been a string of upsets in ESL Pro League so far, with the world No.1, Natus Vincere, currently sitting at the bottom of Group B with one victory from three matches. karrigan sees three clear favorites in his group, but he admits that he wouldn't be surprised if the recent trend of upsets continued.

"We, FaZe and G2 are the main favorites to make it through, but it's online, so being a favorite doesn't really matter," he said. "We've been playing really well against FaZe on LAN, while G2 are and up-and-coming team, they are the No.3 team in the world right now and they have been doing really well lately. I think those two teams are going to be fighting with us for the top spot. But I don't see all three making it, there will probably be someone who loses some games and also some teams bringing upsets.

"You have to be prepared for a lot of stuff online when compared to LAN, because people take more chances and they feel more comfortable at home. I expected some madness [in terms of results], but not the level of madness we've seen so far. I think the better teams, once they get into their rhythm, their form is going to be better."

MOUZ carried their spectacular form from the final stretch of 2019 into the New Year, winning the ICE Challenge. They were second in the world rankings heading into IEM Katowice but could not reach the playoffs following defeats to G2 and 100 Thieves.

"We didn't have the best bootcamp," karrigan explained. "When it comes to that, you can always have better preparation, but we did what we could with the preparation we had. I think we didn't live up to the level we had at the end of last year and when we played the London tournament. When we rewatched the games, we felt that, as a team, we didn't play like we used to and the level of the individual players wasn't there. It was good to learn and move on for the rest of the year, to get better as a team. We're still there not yet, in terms of being the best team in the world, but I think we will get there eventually.

The Danish tactician also touched on the pros and cons of building an international lineup. He admitted that there are specific elements of the game that these teams have to work on to make up for the fact that, according to him, their communication will never be as good as that of single-nationality rosters.

"Our communication will never be on the same point as Astralis's," he said. "That means we can never really perfect it. You can make it good or decent, but you have other focus areas as a team. Once you have the communication on a level you are satisfied with, because you can never really be happy as it will never be as good as the communication of domestic teams, you just focus on other aspects of your team and slowly, over time, improve communication. At some point you're just used to it."