Luken: "We're hanging in the balance now, but every team we play is in the same situation"

9z survived their first elimination match after going 0-2 on the first day of play, and we talked to the team's AWPer, Luca "⁠Luken⁠" Nadotti, to learn more about he and his team's situation.

9z had the worst possible start at the PGL Major Antwerp Americas RMR, losing a close map to the first team to qualify with a 3-0 score, MIBR, before falling to Evil Geniuses in their second best-of-one in the opening day of play. The Latin American squad bounced back in their first series, against Bad News Bears, eliminating the North Americans 2-0 to stay in contention and survive to play another day.

Luken sat down to chat about his side, one of the lesser known squads at the RMR event, introducing the team and talking about how they've been fairing from their creation at the beginning of the year all the way up until the ongoing Major qualifier, while also touching on the state of Counter-Strike in Argentina, a country that has recently seen a fair amount of growth with more investment.

Viewers outside of Latin America and Spain may not know you guys as well as some of the other teams here, could you tell me a bit about the 9z project since you and dav1d joined?

The new 9z team came together in January when try and BIT left. BIT moved to the coaching role for a while before leaving and max became in-game leader for the first time in his career, something that is hard when we're playing good teams because you need a lot of experience as a leader. When I joined I thought it would be a good time for me to pick the AWP back up, which is still a bit weird, but I'm adapting the best possible way I can and the team is giving me freedom to adapt the best possible way.

We wanted to be a Spanish speaking team, so we added dav1d, he's a player that has an incredible amount of firepower. A lot. One of the most in the whole region. He may just need a bit more experience playing tournaments and LANs abroad against top teams, but he's had experience playing with Brazilians in that fast and aggressive style, so he does have that experience.

Those are the important changes in the team, with rox keeping his entry-fragger role and dgt also keeping his lurking role, the latter being the one that I played before, but I didn't want to come in and ask for a role that was already taken in the team. That's the project in a nutshell. Since we've only played one tournament against tier 1-2 teams, ESL Challenger February, with Virtus.pro, FURIA, Dignitas and Movistar Riders. This is only our second tournament and our first LAN as a team, which I think was noticeable on the first day, so we're doing the best we can.

How was your preparation before coming here? Did you get to bootcamp?

We went to bootcamp in Germany on March 27, playing a lot of hours a day, a lot of maps, to try and come here in good shape. It's the same place we stayed at when we played ESL Challenger February and we knew it well. It was a nice two week bootcamp, we got to play a lot of European teams, we practice a lot of top tier teams and second tier teams. The level here is very advanced and I think that every team should take the time to come and play here because the difference is huge.

This actually brings me to the growth of Counter-Strike in Latin America, particularly the Spanish speaking countries like Argentina, Uruguay or Chile, that have always been a bit behind Brazil. Now, in Argentina especially, it seems that there has been an explosion with a lot of new projects, right?

Yeah, I think all games exploded, all esports. It started during the pandemic because people had to spend so much time at home, so they used the internet more and that took them to watching streams, tournaments. And in our region it really helps that Sergio Agüero created his organization, KRÜ, and so more people are now willing to invest in esports. I think that's the future. As long as there's investment there will be players, because there already were players before, they're the same ones as always. Some new guys are coming up, but teams also need the veterans.

What's most necessary is that organizations support players by doing things like sending them to bootcamp in Europe. When you go back home you realize that it would become a lot more competitive. So yeah, a lot of it is because of Agüero and because organizations are starting to invest in esports with a long term vision.

What state is Counter-Strike at now regarding its development in Argentina? Looking at the Americas RMR most of the top teams are from North America and Brazil, and then there's teams like Isurus, Leviatan and 9z.

As 9z I think we're a bit more competitive than Leviatan, we're more on the path of playing internationally, even if it didn't look like it the first day. We've been working a lot and practice is going well against all sorts of teams, we've played the likes of Astralis and FaZe and had productive praccs against them. But it's hard making a Spanish speaking team in Latin America because they don't last long, and although we're starting to break through now and starting to play in other regions, there's still a ways to go. I also feel like maybe Argentina and Spain could mix more because of the language, because the most important thing is that all players can communicate well.

There have been a couple of projects with Argentinian and Spanish players together.

Yeah, and EasTor stood in for 9z as well, tutehen is playing in Spain. Maybe it's easier to take some Argentinean players to Spain than trying to bring Spanish people to Argentina, but the most important thing is that organizations reach the point where they can properly support the players in every possible way.

Do you think we'll get to the point in which more and more Argentinian teams can break through? At the RMR you're here as an underdog, will we see the day you're seen as favorites?

Time, that's what's needed. We got together very recently, but despite our bad first day I thought we were going to beat MIBR. As far as Argentinians in general, I think we need more players. We have players, but a lot of the times it's the same players and they're not always very professional, so we need organizations to make the players more professional when it comes to practice hours, tournaments, proper schedules. A lot of teams are managed by the players or the captain, and they don't even have a coach or an analyst. Teams need a staff to be able to take flight.

So we're still young, now there's Leviatan, Isurus has been here a long time even if now they're a mix, 9z, Furious isn't here but they've been around a long time, and it's expected that KRÜ will have a team.

What's up with that, because it's been a while since the organization was put together but they never announced a team?

I'm not sure what's up with that, I think eventually they'll have a team, although now they're doing well in VALORANT and have been investing in that. It's Sergio Agüero's organization so I'm sure they're very professional. It's a more European style organization because he spent his career playing in elite teams there and he saw how football structures work there and I think he wants to bring that back to Argentina. It'll just take some time.

There's also Boca, River, some local teams investing a bit, I don't know if a lot or not, but it seems like they're starting.

Yeah, little by little, and they're getting in which is what's important. I don't think they're huge projects right now, it will probably depend on the tournaments they can win and so on. If you start winning tournaments you can get more from the organization to see how far they can stretch their budgets and so on. But I think there's still some development that needs to be made.

How about the tournament itself? You said you felt good going into the MIBR match and you started out strong, but in the end you went down 13-16 in a close match. What happened? Was it nerves?

Sure, some people may be a bit nervous, but I think it was a combination of bad decisions that weren't happening to us before because we have some strong maps. We were more passive than we're used to because we're a pretty aggressive team, playing outside you always find that you need to take quick decisions and take control, but we weren't doing that, we were very slow and letting other teams gain space and play their game. That's what happened, we gave MIBR space despite feeling like we were stronger. After that we lost to EG, who were coming from a loss and they really rallied against us.

We were very sad after the first day, but my thought is always that if you want to win or qualify you have to be able to beat every team. That's where we're at now, any team that we play against we're going to have to beat and I feel good about that because it's best-of-threes now and we're going to play them out. It's going to be a lot of fun.

In regards to the tournament itself, I haven't played a tournament like this in two years, since I was in Sharks, so playing an event like this put together by a big organizer is incredible and I'm enjoying it, I'm having fun.

Comparing your time to Sharks, which is when you started to break out internationally, where do you see yourself now?

The truth is that I feel like I've gone down a step because I'm playing a different role. I had a lot of knowledge and I played well in my old role before, and I think that during our best days with Sharks we were very strong and could play anyone. We practiced against a lot of top tier teams and could face everyone and competed well at tournaments against teams like Astralis or G2.

I also feel that way because we're a new team, which is also a challenge. Now I just need to adapt to the role, or maybe in the future we'll change things around, who knows, but we're in a great organization that supports us, gives us freedom and trusts us fully. Our owner travels with us, there's a friendship that goes beyond the game while at the same time everything is done very professionally. So I do see myself a bit below my time in Sharks, but it will come with time, with work, when we get to know each other.

You, personally, have played many roles in your career, right?

Yeah, I AWPed before, but I was also the in-game leader so I could manage the team in a way that made me more comfortable, which is something that is a bit more uncomfortable now, not being the IGL.

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So it's that division of being the AWPer without leading.

Yeah, but I still give a lot of ideas, I talk a lot and help the leader. When I'm in the game I need to make decisions quickly or I start to feel stuck waiting for calls. That happened to me a bit during the first games, so I told myself I'm going to start becoming more active again and I was in our victory today.

I like being a player that can do everything and I feel like every team needs players that can do anything because Counter-Strike is a situational game. If someone wins a timing or feels something during the round they have to take charge and in one second they can go from lurker to entry, so every player needs to know everything. How to open angles, how to ask for utility, so I like being a complete player.

Regarding the AWP, there used to be more aggressive roaming AWPs, whereas now there tends to be more positional play. Where are you on that scale?

I'm more of an aggressive AWPer, but I have noticed by watching demos that I have a lot of the tendencies of a rifler, which puts me in situations where I get killed a lot. Now I'm starting to watch more passive players, but the thing is that every AWPer has his own play and depends on his team, knowing when he can peek and punish. It's very hard because you have to play a lot thinking about what the other teams is doing, knowing exactly where to move and how because if you loose a pick or are vulnerable to a flash and die, it's making AWPers become more passive.

Being able to throw utility to teammates is also making AWPers more passive because there's a lot of possibilities now and you can just throw flashes for teammates to plant the bomb and then hold angles during the retake which is makes things easier.

You beat Bad News Bears 2-0 to stay alive, much needed for the team's morale?

Yeah, yeah. We needed a win, going home 0-3 would have made us really, really sad, we didn't deserve to go home so fast. I also changed a bit and started to use the AK more on the attack to get comfortable. This is map dependent of course because some maps require the AWP. We're going to watch the demos and try to fix as much as we can, now we're just going day by day. We're hanging in the balance now, but we know that every team we play is going to be in the same situation. It's a bit strange, but it's exciting, I'm excited to play every match now.

What are you doing after the RMR?

We wanted to keep practicing here, but we have some qualifiers back home, which we have to go back there to play. We're going step by step and the organization is always there, asking us what we want to do and we'll decide with our coach Rafael "⁠zakk⁠" Fernandes.