cadiaN: "I don't think we've hit our A-game yet, but it's about to come"

The Heroic captain spoke to us after qualifying for the PGL Major Antwerp playoffs over Vitality.

HEROIC have claimed the sixth playoff spot in PGL Major Antwerp after advancing on day four of the Legends Stage with a 3-2 record, coming out on top of a three-map series against Vitality to advance to the Antwerps Sportpaleis, where fans will gather from May 19-22 as Counter-Strike crowns its next champion.

After seeing off the French-Danish combine and securing their own spot in the top-eight stage, HEROIC in-game leader Casper "⁠cadiaN⁠" Møller spoke to HLTV.org about making it through to the playoffs of back-to-back Majors and what he hopes to achieve this time around, feeding off the energy of the crowd, and his fiery personality.

cadiaN, you're through 3-2, back-to-back Major playoffs. Just tell me how you're feeling right now.

Would I have liked a more clean route? Sure. But at the end of the day, at all of the stages, it's about proceeding to the next one. If you see here some of the teams who went 3-0, you can either draw like, NAVI, or you can draw Spirit.

Nothing against Spirit, but obviously experience-wise in the stage and stuff, there's a big difference in who you draw, so if you're 3-1, 3-0, 3-2, it doesn't matter too much. Again, I've said it earlier, I don't think we've hit our A-game yet, but it's about to come. But yeah, happy.

What are you most looking forward to when you actually play on stage?

I'm hoping we can make it deeper than last time, get to the final. Also there's been all this saying about how when we get to the playoffs, we don't perform the same way, I think it's going to maybe be easier to replicate the way we've been playing in this stage compared to other, earlier stages, because we've been smashing people a bit more.

If we play like this [the match against Vitality], it's not sure we're going to win the quarter-final, but obviously the stage, the crowd, the energy, we're feeding off that, and as always, being a top eight Major team is no slouch, and I'm just hyped to see my boys making moves again.

Yeah, let's talk about how you just played. Those last two maps were really close, Overpass kind of slipped away, and then Inferno came really close with Vitality almost pulling off a comeback. Walk me through those last two maps specifically, since Mirage was a bit of a blowout.

Overpass, we should have won it for sure. Some small mistakes which definitely cost us, like we had some openings and situations where we knew where they were coming and we didn't release our counter-utility in time, and the setups were a little bit inefficient. We should never lose that Overpass to be honest, especially with the T side we had and how we won some of the CT rounds.

On the third map, Inferno, we got off to a sick start on CT, it's the first time we've played it in the tournament but it's one of our best maps if you look, statistically-speaking, so we're super confident having that as a third map. We also had some tricks up our sleeves that we hadn't used in other games with the demos up. Obviously when they started calling their way back, I think the biggest difference you see in this team compared to if you play a less experienced team in a game like this, they still had balls. They pushed a lot of things as CT, made it super difficult for us to line up set executes and try to play by the books.

You can see that they are experienced players and that they are really good players, cause other teams would just crumble under that pressure, being behind so much, but they really gave us a run for our money.

You're the only all-Danish team in playoffs at the moment. Player-wise there's karrigan, and also Snappi on ENCE, who beat you yesterday to qualify. Heading into the playoffs with ENCE there too, is there any sort of rivalry going on there?

Not specifically. I think I like Snappi more than he likes me [laughs]. We have different philosophies in the game, but if you combine them, it can be really good, and you saw that when we played together for a long time in Heroic as well. But obviously sometimes when there's disagreements, you split up eventually, because philosophies can be too... left and right, but I think it's hella nice that he made playoffs for the first time at a Major. It's well deserved, they have a sick lineup, people who shoot really nice, and they have really good fundamentals as well. I don't think we have a rivalry with Snappi at all, I'm glad he made it.

You're obviously a fiery character, you bring something really valuable to the game with that whole personality. There's people who watch CS love that and others who aren't really fans of that, do you want to see more of what you bring from other teams as well?

I can understand why some people have a hard time coping with it, but it's like... when I saw apEX play a few years ago and stuff like this, I was also like, 'oh this guy is too crazy, it's annoying, screaming and stuff like this,' but what I do is kinda the same. Those kind of things just apparently split people's opinions, but I think for me, apEX for example is one of the realest players out there, his passion and emotion is so good for the game. He's one of those who, when we lost some tough games, he texted me privately like, 'don't worry, you guys will come back up, you're a sick team' and stuff.

Having that personality and showing your character, it's really good for the game. Can it be too much sometimes? Sure, but again, it's how I am, I like to hype my teammates, I like to scream, and I also think that if you win and have a big national following behind you, people are like, 'ah, that's hella nice,' but if you don't or if it's against their favorite player or something, then people will criticize it, you know? So that doesn't bother me too much to be honest, I think it's really good that there's energy in the game, I don't think anyone would watch ten people just sitting there and slow fist bumping, not doing anything.

Are you going to bring that fire to the stage then?

Yeah, of course!

The final playoff matchups aren't decided yet, is there a team you'd really like to match up to in the quarter-finals out of the pool?

Not really. Maybe in some of the previous games, you'd sometimes look at, 'oh, who can we face if we win or lose,' but I didn't do it this time around. We just focused on this game, doesn't matter who we play in the playoffs, but obviously there are teams who have more LAN experience than others, but yeah, no... I'll give you the political answer, there's no one I really specifically want.