regali on his experience in Kyiv: "When you see seriousness and professionalism it leads to a professional way of living Counter-Strike"

We sat down with fnatic Rising's AWPer to hear his story and understand more about the international team as they fight for survival at the WePlay Academy League.

Iulian "⁠regali⁠" Harjău came out of nowhere to become a fan favorite and the second-highest rated player at the WePlay Academy League group stage, as he and fnatic Rising knocked out the top-rated Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov and his NAVI Junior in the final match of the group stage play-in to qualify for the finals in Kyiv.

fnatic Rising played one of the two favorite teams at the event in their opening match, Young Ninjas and were thrashed by the Swedes, leaving the squad under the orders of Kevin "⁠Kevve⁠" Bohlin and overlooked by fnatic veteran Maikil "⁠Golden⁠" Selim to fight for their lives against BIG Academy in the first round of the lower bracket.

The Romanian player, who has been living in Denmark for several years, opened up about the hardship of making his school life and professional aspirations in Counter-Strike mesh, as well as his experience trying to make a path for himself outside of his native Romanian scene — which included being snubbed by Astralis Talent before finding a spot in fnatic Rising—, and the story of how his current team was formed.

The first thing I'd like to do is talk about you, personally. You became a fan-favorite during the group stage doing a lot of the post-match interviews and putting up really good performances to end up as the second-highest rated player. Tell me a bit about your path to fnatic Rising.

I'm Romanian, but I'm based in Denmark, actually. I started playing in the Romanian scene since I started to play CS, which was like 2014. I grinded a bit and in 2017 or something like that I decided I wanted to go pro. In 2018, when I was 16-years-old, I qualified to FPL-C and the whole Romanian scene thought I was cheating because I was the first one to qualify and I was the youngest, so I didn't really get support or "love" from the Romanian community and I couldn't find myself a team back then.

I had to stop playing CS for a bit because of school and I got kicked from FPL-C, so it became a break for me. I came back in 2019 and instantly found myself a team, and when covid came the Romanian esports scene grew so much. So many people were watching esports in Romania during the covid period and everybody wanted to play competitively to try and beat Nexus. They're the best in Romania, the same way in Portugal you have SAW and everyone else, in Romania you have Nexus and everyone else. Nexus won the national league but there were scouts and organizations that wanted to make teams in the Romanian scene, so I joined GameAgents after the tournament. Alex, the CEO, asked me if I wanted to join with two more Romanian players because he saw there was some talent in Romania.

I joined GameAgents in 2020 and we qualified to some HLTV tournaments. That's when I switched my role, I had always played with the rifle but people said I should AWP because I would have more impact. So in 2020 I started to AWP. I grinded with GameAgents until the beginning of the summer, but I couldn't handle it anymore because nothing was rewarding from the organization and the scene. Nexus is too big for everyone else, so if they wanted one of our players they could just buy him. It happened twice, so I just said, 'OK, they took two of my friends, maybe they want me, maybe not, but I cannot handle it anymore.' We were always better but they would then drain our team.

Now I'm the second Romanian after iM from GamerLegion to understand that you have to go international because Romania is not a good place to stay too long. It's a good place to develop but not a good place to stay. So I was like, 'OK, now I leave this scene forever!' Well... Maybe forever [laughs]. So yeah, I just told them I didn't want to play anymore, I was a free agent for two weeks and then fnatic posted that they're looking for players to join the academy team. I sent [a request] but I didn't think I'd be picked because in January Astralis did it as well, and because I'm living in Denmark I wanted to join Astralis Talent...

Did you grow up in Denmark?

I moved to Denmark in 2015 and didn't really have that many friends or know the language, so I was playing CS a lot. I've been living in Denmark during my CS career, but Denmark hasn't given much regarding CS, although it gave me time because the school system is better than in Romania. Time is so precious to me these days because there's practice and school, you know? So I had time to practice. But I never had Danish CS:GO friends until now, until I got more popular, so nobody from Denmark recognized me and everyone knows me from the Romanian scene.

So Astralis were making their academy team...

Their manager was very bad to me. Yeah, I was unknown, but they told me they would contact me soon if they have a spot. Then they kept switching players without contacting me, so I got mad and didn't know what to do. Was I not good enough? I continued to grind six months more with GameAgents, but at that time I was thinking that it would be six months maximum. So yeah, they never contacted me, and that's why when I applied for fnatic Rising I had no hope, but somehow Golden and kevve contacted me to join the team and we started grinding the WePlay Academy League.

It was great because it was summer and I had time to grind myself and with the team like a full-time job, eight or nine hours a day, and I was at my peak performance. It's easy to be on top if you also have the talent, when you do it like a full-time job, but since I started school again I play three or four hours max. And the first hour, half of the first hour, my mind is still at school and the other half is balancing with CS. So it's just hard.

So I guess it felt good to beat Astralis Talent.

It felt amazing! That's why I also wanted to have a good match, and I really did, in both of them.

How was the selection process for fnatic Rising and playing under kevve and Golden?

It happened like 48 hours before the first match and kevve only answered, 'it'll be me and Peppzor,' so we didn't know who the last players were going to be until 24 hours before the match, when we found out that kst and prosus will join. So the team was just on the line, right before the matches. We practiced the day before, it was our only day of practice, and it was so different to the Romanian scene. One guy from Portugal bringing his things on some maps, German CS is very tactical and utility-based, so prosus was talking about flashes and smokes for two hours while kevve was like 'no, we can just do that, simply that,' so it was a mix of ideas.

Playing under kevve's calls feels amazing. You always have to have full trust in the IGL's calls, but he was also fnatic's analyst so he really knows what he's doing. When we were preparing for games, and I really haven't had IGLs, I only had one before, but he's a guy that comes so prepared, he's like a Wikipedia of CS. Everything I ask him during the game, maybe it's like the sixth round, and he'll come up with an idea about what they may do. I really trust that and so I put his thought in my mind so I don't have to think myself, I just have to use my hands. I feel like this sometimes, during summer I just felt like that, like a robot, because his brain is more developed than mine [laughs]... regarding CS, he's more experienced.

It's also great because Golden comes with insane understanding of opponents and about how to think and take it slowly outside of the game. It's a mix of Swedish thoughts and best minds that have helped the big fnatic be in a good spot at one point.

You had a decent group stage, you made it through the play-in and qualified for the LAN. What happened from the group stage to now? You were not one of the favorites to win, but the match against Young Ninjas was an unexpected blow-out.

We didn't really practice, the first two weeks after WePlay we practiced five hours a day, but after that we didn't really practice, we practiced two or three days a week and we also practiced on Sundays sometimes because we struggled for time during the weekdays, so sometimes we picked up Sundays, when pro teams don't really practice, so it was hard to find good teams to practice with.

The whole month of August after the group stage was a struggle, and from now on I don't know what's going to happen, because I don't see an option to practice more with me having school, I'm not sure exactly what to do.

What were your expectations coming into the LAN?

I'd say top 2 or 3, since we know mouz NXT bootcamped and they've had their roster for a long time, but then we also thought that it could be third because Young Ninjas play more tournaments in the summer and other leagues, so they had officials to prepare for, they had a lot of practice, so yeah, we came here with the mindset of experiencing stuff, not really just winning.

Talking about experiencing stuff, Ro1f from Young Ninjas said he felt like you were maybe a bit more nervous than they were, that they were the more confident team. Do you think playing on LAN had anything to do with it?

No, no. To be honest, no, because our practice lately was as bad as the match we played. There's just something happening and I think it's the lack of practice or the lack of not being able to go full time. Because yeah, we can practice three-hours a day, but it doesn't feel like eight hours. It doesn't feel like a practice, it just feels like you play some matches because you don't have structure. You have to be constant like we were in summer. At 11:00 you know you're going to be in practice until 19:00, and that's it. You need that structure, schedule and a good routine for everyone.

The worst thing ever was to sacrifice my individual time, I didn't play any deathmatch or aimbotz in the last two weeks because I really wanted to practice with the team, and I can now see that it hurt me.

So you're in your last year of high school?

Yeah, and there's now way I can just cancel it, you know? It's the last year.

Yeah, of course. How did you manage to study and play in the past?

It was a bit easier with GameAgents because it was during the covid period and I was staying home. But again, we were practicing four or five hours max., and not even against the best teams. Now it's harder because it's in English and everyone has to be on the same page even before the practice. When I was playing with the Romanians we could just explain everything some minutes before the match, but it doesn't work here for some reason, and we saw yesterday at the meeting after we lost to Young Ninjas that we weren't on the same page, not before and not after. So we talked it through with Golden.

I also didn't play at my peak performance in GameAgents and we didn't really win anything after March, which is why I ended up leaving. But it's just hard to have CS and school at the same time when you want to try and make it even just that professional.

Golden isn't really officially a coach, but he has been helping the team out. What has his figure been for this team?

His way is like efficient work and efficient practice. Even if we do three hours, he keeps saying that it has to be efficient, that even if it's just little stuff, we have to learn it for the next day. That's efficiency, everybody has to know and be on the same page, although we're not. He's helping very much with us having the same puzzle in our minds. So like communication, he speaks so much about communication and how it has to be clear and good, so everybody can build that same puzzle with the same information, which we're struggling with right now. So yeah, it's the communication and the knowledge.

Speaking of communication, you decided to make the jump to an international squad because you didn't think that remaining in Romania would pay off for you in the long term. That can come with communication problems and people from different cultures not always being on the same page, so how has the adjustment been?

It's not really about language, about English, it's about a different understanding. I understood the game wrong, I would say, because Golden comes with a good perspective about it. I don't know if that's the Swedish perspective, or not, but it's clearly different than the German one, because I can tell from prosus' perspective, who has been playing with tabseN, he has some things set in mind that may not be OK for Golden. And for me, both are OK. So I just try to adapt with everybody, I'm the one that's not saying anything because I know that compared to scenes like the Swedish or the German ones, Romania is on a lower level, so I don't really have input in this team. I just learn, I don't give anything.

You give frags...

Yeah, in the good days. Golden and cArn said they see a lot of talent in me, but it has to be worked on. But I don't believe it. I don't really believe in talent. Only m0NESY is talented and I beat him just because we had the Swedish anti-strats, the Swedish thoughts. They basically told me what to do. They told me where to get him, where to kill m0NESY.

But that's part of the learning process, right? Someone with more experience tells you something, then it clicks and you can start thinking that way for yourself in the long run, it doesn't just happen overnight that you can have all of the knowledge downloaded into your brain.

But you can forget it... If you start your day doing some maths, it's not the same as starting it working on CS.

You said earlier that the team's goal is to get some experience from this event. What are you hoping to get out of it, specifically?

Just playing here I can see the professionalism, also from the staff, the management, the preparation, but also the players, how much they train in the bootcamp rooms and how they take this game seriously. So you can see everybody is serious. And you have to be, because it's a job and it's the way to get into the pro level.

This is like a simulation of Tier 1 Counter-Strike, and that's the ultimate goal, you know? What I get out of this is that anybody here could become a top 20 player in the future if they keep doing what they're doing right here, right in this moment, preparing like this. So that means that if we're surrounded by the professionalism, players and people like are here, you can get to Tier 1. Tournaments like this are rewarding the player's work and assuring the player's future, because when you're playing and winning like Young Ninjas, I'm sure they're thinking, 'hey, we'll get to Tier 1 soon' and that's a rewarding thought. Big tournaments, big prize pools, when you see the seriousness and the professionalism it leads to a professional way of living CS.

The way to the top in the past few years has been through FPL in many cases, do you think this is going to be the new way to make it, joining an academy team?

Yeah, definitely. It's rewarding in every way. It's a way of saying 'thank you, because you're playing well and you're a talent.' The thing is, with FPL, sometimes they're kicking players, sometimes they're not, and when they kick players it means they didn't do their job well or they didn't focus.

This, it can only be good, because if you lose, you lose as a team, in FPL, if you get kicked, it's individual stuff. So if you lose at a tournament like this you just have to work with the team and make sure to get back, it's more like getting to the right spot with five people helping each other