NiKo: "It's taking much more time than we had expected to adjust everything"

We spoke to the Bosnian rifler after G2 secured their IEM Dallas playoff berth with a win over Vitality.

G2 are through to the top-six stage of IEM Dallas, where they will have the opportunity to play in front of an audience when the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center opens its doors to the public from June 3-5. The European combine had stumbled in the Legends Stage of PGL Major Antwerp to miss out on a stage appearance, but have redeemed themselves in Texas, fighting through the lower bracket of Group A and recovering from a loss to ENCE to make it through to the quarter-finals.

After the team beat Vitality to secure their spot, we spoke to Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač to get his thoughts on how G2 have been progressing since the additions of Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov, Aleksi "⁠Aleksib⁠" Virolainen, and Rémy "⁠XTQZZZ⁠" Quoniam, with the Bosnian star sharing some insight into what they have put their focus on and how their young AWPing talent has been developing since his addition. NiKo also touched on his own dip in individual form compared to the previous year, citing a slight loss in confidence that he hopes to get back.

Let's start with the series you just played, a pretty dominant 13-2 CT side on Dust2, talk me through that.

We were in control at all times during Dust2. In general we played amazing CT side, and on T side we just closed it out, Aleksi had some good and confident calls toward the end of the second half.

Talking about Aleksib and the dynamic between you, obviously you had to call during EPL while he wasn't there, but otherwise how has it been going working with him and what he's bringing to the team?

He's obviously fully the IGL. He does all the work for the IGL role. He brings a lot of structure, I would say that he brings a lot of versatility as well because he has been changing things all the time, we don't repeat the same things too often so I think it's hard to prepare for us as well. Obviously we haven't been having great results, but we have been improving since the Major. At the Major we just kind of underperformed, I don't think we showed the level that we were supposed to.

At this event, we started slow, but then we started to gain confidence back, started to find our groove as well as a team, and obviously it just gets easier once you start rolling. Now it's going to get easier for him as well to call when we have a couple of events in the bag, it just helps with the confidence and everything, it's just going to get better and better from here on. Overall, he has been bringing a lot of versatility as I said, obviously we have still been figuring out how to use everyone on T side, that's also been one of the key goals for us I would say.

It's just taking much more time than we had expected to adjust everything. That's why we had a rough 2-3 months, we were still getting to know each other. Even though we did Katowice really good, but then after we were starting to see more and more problems. It just took a very long time for us to figure everything out and get to know each other, and I think now, we should be just on the climb.

When you say it took a long time to figure everything out, what do you mean?

Just to figure out the way we want to play as a team, what suits us more, because it's very hard to call the same way in every team. So you just try to find a way, what's the best way that suits us, the way that makes everyone on the team comfortable. That's the thing that we have been working on.

Talking about your individual form a bit, it has been slipping a bit compared to the high of last year, even excluding EPL where you had to IGL while Aleksi was unable to play. Is that because of some of these specific issues, where it was a little uncomfortable with the way the team was initially?

I don't want to blame it on everything. I always felt okay playing, but I never felt as confident as I was last year. For me, it's just trying to figure out the way I need to play in this team basically, and just find my consistency I would say, because I have high peaks but it's just not consistent nowadays. It also depends on the maps that we are playing, because some maps I do really good consistently, but some maps it can be very terrible.

I'm just trying to find a way of how to improve, it has nothing to do with Aleksi or anyone, I just need to find my way how to get back on the confidence and the level that I was toward the end of the last year.

Something I've heard Mauisnake mention is that when he's watched your recent demos, you're not jiggling or clearing angles the same way you used to, not as methodically. Does that also just tie into lacking that confidence?

I was entrying much more in this team than I used to in the previous lineup, maybe that's the reason why I just couldn't find any consistency, and maybe I was forcing some plays too much. It just hasn't been great at all, especially on the T sides. I still feel like every time I play the CT side, I do really good, but as soon as I hit the T side it just... it's just not great.

As I said, it's very dependent on the map. It's just about finding a way how to do better., but I'm confident in myself. I honestly don't expect myself nowadays to hit the same numbers, because now we have m0NESY as well, who is doing a really good job. As soon as he joined, he was good, but now he is getting better and better, so I don't need to have the same numbers nor can I have the same numbers if I have a player next to me who is putting up good numbers as well. I just want to find a way how to be more useful on T side I would say.

That's a good moment to transition talk to m0NESY a little more, how has he been integrating into the team and what's his development been like so far?

He's been amazing so far, and he's been improving ever since he joined. We could see that when he joined, there were a lot of things he needed to work on to become a good support. He was sometimes repeeking too much or just using the same position over again, where he was probably getting free frags in FACEIT or this academy league, but some of the things that he was doing, people don't give you the opportunity in the tier one scene.

There was a lot of work with him that we put, but he has improved significantly. As I said, ever since he joined, he just kept improving, and I'm really surprised the way he was taking everything. He just took everything as a lesson, and that's why he improved so fast. I'm really proud of him, and if he keeps working on himself, I think we all know what he is capable of.

So not too many growing pains with him outside of the specific things he needed to work on that you mentioned — does he take his own initiative with that?

He takes his own initiative as well, but we just help him with some other things. Like for example, he likes to play a lot, right? I mean, you're young, it was the same with me, you don't want to watch demos right? But then we need to force him to watch some of the demos, to do some of the things that he just cannot do it individually I want to say, cause he wants to play 24/7 and it's not about playing, only because his level is already very high when it comes to shooting and all these kind of things So we're trying to push him to do this other work a bit more so he improves even faster.

Before we talk about making the playoffs here, I wanted to touch on the whole smoke bug situation at the Major. Obviously it caused that massive controversy, what kind of effect did that have on the team?

Well I can't talk for everyone. For me, I didn't really care at all. I don't know if it got Ilya [m0NESY], it probably did a little because he is super young and all the Brazilian community got to him, but it didn't get to us. We knew that we didn't do anything wrong, we knew we did it completely legally, and it's just a shitty situation.

To be honest, I remember people using some bugs against me, and I wouldn't like us to not use the bug but then see someone else using it against me, right? And I think we did it in a correct way, we have asked admins and they said that we can use it, so we just use it before someone else is gonna use it against us.

Moving on past the Major, obviously the Legends Stage wasn't the result you would have wanted, but now you've made it through to the playoffs here in Dallas. How does it feel to bounce back from the Major and make the playoffs here?

It means a lot for the confidence and for the team in general. We're going to feel much better now that we are getting back to playoffs, because we have missed on the last two events, the Major and ESL Pro League. It was pretty tough for us, and even here it was getting a bit out of control, but honestly I'm very proud of the guys and how we managed to play those last two games, even though they were very high pressure games.

We have closed out both games pretty... not convincingly, but we felt confident and we felt in control at all times, and that is very important. We didn't stress too much even though we have shitty results for the past two events and this one we didn't start great, so it was very important that we kept cool and that is probably the biggest reason why we closed out the games against Astralis and Vitality so smoothly.

You're playing against the loser of BIG versus FURIA, how do you feel about that matchup heading into the playoffs?

Obviously we want to take revenge on FURIA from the Major, but I think also it might be easier for us to play against BIG. We also haven't played them in ages I feel like, so it will be an interesting game, but honestly I don't really care who we play, I just want us to do good, and I want us to keep improving throughout the event, I think that's super important for us. No matter the opponent, I don't even care if we win or lose, I just want us to keep working as a team and keep improving on some of the goals we have set for this event. That would mean a lot for me and the team.

What kind of goals have you set for this event?

Improving map pool is definitely one of them, we have been working on situations where have one or two man advantage because we were lacking team play in those rounds and obviously we have put high focus on how to close out the games.

So more step by step before aiming for titles then?

Yep.