Snappi: "I truly believe that we can make Nertz rival what Spinx did for us" *

The Danish IGL talks about the team's recent roster change and their CCT Finals campaign.

ENCE came into CCT Central Europe Finals 1 as the second highest-ranked team, but were forced to use academy player Henri "⁠HENU⁠" Ylilehto at the event after Valdemar "⁠valde⁠" Bjørn Vangså was removed from the active roster. The European combine secured a top-three finish despite that, with two wins now separating them from the title.

The team also signed valde's replacement Guy "⁠NertZ⁠" Iluz during the Maltese tournament, completing the acquisition after falling short in their previous effort during the 2022 summer break.

After ENCE's win against Movistar Riders, Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer sat down with HLTV.org to touch on their marathon first day at the event and the similarities between their new signing and Lotan "⁠Spinx⁠" Giladi.

First of all, I'd like to ask you about the first day of this tournament, where you played until 4 AM, but you still managed to get the wins and qualify for the playoffs. Just walk me through that day, how was the mood in the team?

I mean, it was good, I think the rest slept fine. I think it was just me because I had some personal stuff I needed to do in Denmark, so I left on the day we played, which meant that I had a 6 AM flight. So I was up at 3 AM, so when it was 3 AM 24 hours later and we ended, I was obviously tired, but we had some great resilience. I don't know, at this event we've been struggling a lot on our CT sides, but I think we have almost a 60% win rate or something on T side. So I think the fact that we're just playing as a team pulled us through, we just stuck to the plan and we luckily got the wins.

Today you had another long day. You first lost to Eternal Fire, now you beat Movistar to stay alive in the tournament. Is this tournament one that you would like to win despite playing with a stand-in?

Of course, we would like to win, but at the same time, we got into this tournament with pretty much no expectations. Like the roster change was pretty sudden and we're using an academy player who we had zero practice with, meaning that we are a bit limited in terms of the solutions we can use.

A lot of it comes down to the mid-rounding and I feel like actually, the biggest blow has been the fact that our CT sides are not working at all during this event; I think it's because HENU played a lot of different positions. So a lot of the synergy we are used to having on our CT sides is not there, meaning that we are fighting a lot harder to get the wins home. HENU is doing an amazing job and I think actually here against Movistar, he kind of lost the nerves he might have had and he played amazing and was one of the big factors to us winning.

Okay, so touching on the roster change, you've parted ways with valde after just five months. Can you shed some more light on that?

I would say that the reason we made the change was that the team just wasn't clicking. I don't think it was anyone's fault, we just weren't clicking as a group with the team, how we played and played off each other, and that ultimately led to the change. There's not much more to it and there's no bad blood with valde. He's a very good player and I wish him luck.

You decided to replace him with Nertz. Can you tell me why you chose him out of all of your options?

Yeah, I mean, I've been keen on Nertz for a long time, I was even asked about him by Endpoint back when they picked him up, just when he joined FPL. I said to Spinx instantly, 'this Nertz guy is insane.' And I also was very hot on him in the summer. It was just a no-brainer that we had to pick him up this time. So, yeah, Nertz is going to be a good fit for us, I think. I've been watching his game for a long time and I think he's a great player.

Do you see any similarities between him and Spinx? Other than nationality, obviously?

I would say they have certain similarities, but at the same time, I would say they're also different. I think Spinx is maybe a bit more calculated where Nertz is a bit more aggressive, but at the same time, they fill out a lot of the same roles. And I do think both of them have a lot of star potential. I think both of them have pros and cons, and I truly believe that we can make Nertz into Spinx v2.

So just the final question. With Nertz in the lineup, what are your goals for the year?

We haven't really set any goals yet, but obviously, the first goal is to start playing good as a team again. I think we have not really, apart from the RMR and part of the Major, we haven't really been hitting the level we wanted last year after we lost Spinx and hades. So I would say get back to our old level and grind from there, and eventually, we want to get back where we were at, I would say from October 2021 to the summer of 2022. That's the level we want to be at.