flameZ compares new OG to old: "People have much more hunger to win games and we wanna play more"

After qualifying for the BLAST Premier Fall Final, Shahar "⁠flameZ⁠" Shushan talks OG's recovery following a poor start to the Groups and compares his new team to the previous core.

After a week of play OG became the first team to advance to the BLAST Premier Fall Final, pulling off an impressive recovery from a slow start to the tournament as they won three consecutive series in the gauntlet stage, beating Complexity, FaZe, and Astralis.

Following the run, we caught up with flameZ, who was a key performer for the team throughout the gauntlet stage, to ask him about how OG managed to come back from the opening losses in the best-of-one stage and grab big scalps on the way to the Fall Final.

As OG's longest-standing player and now being the only one to remain from the previous core led by Aleksi "⁠Aleksib⁠" Virolainen, the Israeli youngster also reflected on the overhaul the team underwent around him in 2022 and explained why he thought the new lineup has more potential.

Congratulations on making it to the Fall Final. Initial thoughts?

Well, I'm really happy and I'm really proud of the team, I think everyone is proud. We started BLAST with a really bad start and I just think that gave us the motivation.

I think we endured well the losses on the first day, it was kind of a step where we needed to get slapped and learn from it. We had a lot of conversations after that, not exactly about CS but about our relationships with each other and how we should work and engage with each other. I think it basically made us really trust each other, which I think you could see against FaZe yesterday and against Astralis today, it kinda showed.

When I was talking to ruggah, he was talking about the energy lacking. Is that what you were referring to when you were talking about the relationships and stuff like that?

I would say it is also the energy, which is really important for everybody to evolve inside the system that we play. But I think it's also some rounds that you lose — they can kind of break the communication, you feel bad while you play, and some players keep it in their minds. Once you have a good relationship with every player and everyone trusts each other, you cannot go wrong with that, you will trust your teammate to do the best.

Even on Ancient when Astralis started coming back, I just had it in my brain that we're going to win one round because someone is gonna make a great play. So I really trust in my teammates in-game and outside of the game I can blindly trust them, so I feel like it's just easier to play those close matches and maintain focus and communication and energy while you have those relationships with them.

You grabbed some pretty big wins in these last couple of matches, FaZe first and now Astralis. How much confidence does that fill you with so early into the new lineup?

It gives you a lot of confidence because you kind of see what you can reach. I think FaZe yesterday didn't play how they usually play, so we managed to beat them because of that. But I think the potential is there, also with the NAVI wins at the last BLAST event. We can see that there is potential and we still need to grind and work hard, everyone has that mindset right now that we just need to work hard and have even five, six months of playing with each other, officials, grinding everything that is possible.

Confidence or without confidence, I think we can still manage to play really well against those top-five teams in the world, and it obviously gives you a lot of confidence coming up to next tournaments and stuff like that. I will definitely say that gaining confidence from, if you play really well, you slowly gain confidence individually and the team will start to rise.

Tell me about degster and how it has been for you to play alongside him, quite literally, with you sitting next to each other.

I love Abdul, first of all, he's such a... He's a type that I've never met in my life outside of the game and in-game, so I'm starting to learn a new kind of world. In-game when we play on stage, you can see my hand right now, you can see like scars on it, but I think it's pretty good for me because I can feel his energy. I have a lot of eye contact with him and when he's feeling a bit down when he made a mistake or anything like that, I think I have the ability to make him happy, cheer him up for one or two rounds.

With Abdul playing with you, the amount of trust I have in him to win the most impossible rounds is insane. I think we have a good balance in that, Abdul is really good in that as much as F1KU is good in the clutches, and I think NEOFRAG, me, and nexa are balancing out the things on the sides right now. Everyone has a lot of responsibility right now and Abdul is one of the guys with the most responsibilities, and I think we're slowly getting him to that level of the insane AWPer that you cannot play against easily.

You are by far the longest-standing member of this roster. You joined in April last year and the whole team changed around you this year, throughout the last seven months. How different does this team feel after those last changes?

Well, the last roster with mantuu, valde, niko, and Aleksi, I think if I compare the rosters, I think this roster is just — people have much more hunger to win games and we wanna play more CS:GO. With the old roster, even with valde, niko, and nexa, I think we were more lazy. We wanted to play like practice, learn a lot on practice, and then play RMR event after. Playing against Eternal Fire and these tier two teams, they're gonna demolish you because have 200 officials coming up to you and you have like 20.

I think we learned from the mistakes and the coach, Kasper, has done an amazing job. He just knows how to not go on the same path, but also I'm the kind of person that really likes new beginnings, so I really don't mind. I'm happy with everything that I see and interact with new people.

I think this roster has more potential, mainly because people are more hungry to play. In the old roster the experience was immense, but you also gotta give it to the players that I wouldn't say we played under the best circumstances, we didn't play any officials and it was kinda our fault. Our relationship wasn't fully, like we didn't trust each other in seven months of playing, I feel like. I really like the new roster and I have no regrets.

Is there also a different atmosphere? It's a lot of younger guys compared to the previous roster.

Yeah. I would say it's really weird now because in the old roster the youngest guy after me was niko, and he was 23. Right now people are my age, so I can interact with them about things my age instead of like, niko talking about his house and furniture in his house. With the new roster I kinda find myself in the team, the relationship is better, the chemistry is way better outside of the game.

We're still figuring things out because we have to talk a lot more and we're just a few weeks old roster and the player break cut off a lot of the process and mantuu just left — I think mantuu was also a big part of our great chemistry, he was full English and he knew how to interact with everybody, I would say.

Right now, I would say the roster is just full of young kids that are just fun to be around, down to earth, you're not getting tilted, and if you're getting tilted it's instant reset. You're having fun, instantly after you finish game instead of like "GG, guys," F1KU says "let's go bar now, I want beer." These kind of things, it makes me happy to see people feeling comfortable saying these things.

You've had a great event here, but in the past there was some criticism towards you and especially towards a lack of consistency. Do you think that criticism was fair at the time, and how do you feel about your individual form at the moment?

I would say that it was true that I was inconsistent, but I couldn't figure out myself. I was sleeping six hours and I was feeling really awake, and I would sleep eight hours and I was so tired. These things, I would try them on official days because that's where it matters the most and that's where you can test yourself, but I couldn't find myself in terms of eating what I want to eat, what I need to do. I didn't know what was best for me. And also in-game, I felt like I haven't refreshed my knowledge.

Now, if I see how I spend my time playing CS:GO and the self-discipline around it, it's much more efficient and I play way more. I actually have a lot more responsibility for the team, so even when I'm not playing well individually, skill-wise, I feel like I'm actually doing really well because I communicate everything that goes out, and it gets me back in the game if I feel like I'm not part of the game. But the individual form right now, I feel like I grind a lot and there's more to grind. I can just get better from here.

After you didn't manage to qualify for EPL, the next month is going to be fairly empty for you guys apart from Melbourne in a week's time. What's the plan for the run up to the RMR and the Major?

I think I fly on Monday to Melbourne, and then we're gonna play ESL Challenger. We need to win the tournament, that's the goal for the tournament, to win it and qualify for the Conference.

From there, we're gonna take a few days' break just to chill out, because everyone was outside of home since like August 6. People need to calm down and see how it goes in their personal life. Then I think we're gonna start praccing again, and I think we're planning a bootcamp till the end of September. And then in October we're gonna start rolling things again. I think if there's gonna be an online event in September, we're gonna probably play it, but I'm not sure if there's any pineapple cup or this kind of things.