Xizt: "I think jabbi is the best B lurker on Overpass in the world"

The Swedish coach expressed his thoughts on their difficult run through the IEM Rio 2023 group stage.

HEROIC came into IEM Rio after an unbeaten run at the European RMR, where they qualified for the BLAST.tv Paris Major with a 3-0 record just days prior to their trip to Brazil. Alongside a cluttered tournament schedule, the Danish quintet also had to deal with health issues as Jakob "⁠jabbi⁠" Nygaard's illness, and later temporary substitution, affected them in their matches against 9INE, BIG, and especially The MongolZ.

Richard "⁠Xizt⁠" Landström had to step in for the 19-year-old rifler halfway through the match against the Mongolian squad, picking up the mouse for the first time since his appearance for Gen.G against Envy all the way back in November 2020. The Swede helped his team beat The MongolZ in three maps before taking his spot behind HEROIC in their fixture with Ninjas in Pyjamas, where they beat Xizt's old organization 2-0.

The 32-year-old sat down with HLTV after their match on Wednesday, which qualified his team to the playoffs at the Brazilian event. Xizt talked about everything relating to his team's run in the group stage, the impact of jabbi's illness, and his temporary return to the server.

Congrats Xizt, you're now through to the playoffs. How are you feeling right now?

It feels good and it's a big relief. We've had a lot of struggles this tournament, with the main one being jabbi obviously being ill and it really affected us on day one and also on the second day, when I had to step in. So yeah, we've had a lot of struggles and we haven't been able to do the same preparations when Jacob hasn't been around as much as he usually is, so it has affected us a lot, but yeah, I am really relieved that we managed to play so well today.

You mentioned Jabbi being out, he's your highest-rated player so far this year. How does it affect your game when your best player at the moment is not there with you?

It affects a lot, especially on Overpass, he plays a vital part on the T side especially. He's the B lurker and I think he's the best B lurker on that map in the world, so it affects us a lot not having him play. We've had very bad losses, the first against BIG and then against TheMongolz.

You touched on the BIG loss a little bit there, can you tell me, other than jabbi being out, what went wrong in there because it was quite a drawn-out process at times?

I think we lost all the pistol [rounds] and maybe we converted some second rounds, but that definitely hurt us and I think individually we were not on point. Obviously, jabbi can't communicate so well, so the communication wasn't that good either and BIG has also looked better and better at this tournament, I can also see they are playing a close game against NAVI so you'll also have to give respect to them. They are a really good team, especially Krimbo played super well against us and he had some sick rounds with sick entries. You have to give credit to them as well.

Then you played TheMongolz and jabbi was subbed out for you. How did it feel to go back on the server?

It felt really weird being back to play again. I mean, I am with the guys every day in practice so I know all of the strats, but it's different when you actually play them instead of watching. Nade lineups and things like this are not where they are supposed to be, but luckily I've got to practice at least once with the guys when Jacob was feeling ill. It was also a lot of fun being there playing, and the guys helped me a lot with communication and telling me what to do. I got a lot of help as well.

Did you take jabbi's roles for the rest of the map or did you try to swap with someone else?

No, I just took jabbi's roles, and tried to keep it as simple as possible.

You played today against NIP and that's actually a team you have a lot of history with, so how did it feel to not only get a win so smoothly but also to have such a good performance after the first two days? Was that something you needed?

Yeah I think this victory was a big statement and I think NIP have looked pretty good lately and they qualified for the Major with some convincing wins at the RMR. As you said I have a lot of history with them, played with two of the players and I was in the organization for like five or six years. Our ex-mental coach is their mental coach now, we have a lot of history with the team and we have played against them quite a lot, especially last year at some really important games. They have beaten us a few times, so we really wanted this win, it means a lot for us as a team.

There has been a lot of conversation around the community about you guys being the only truly elite team at the moment, while everyone else can more or less beat each other. What do you think of that statement?

I think what we do really well is that we prepare for every game the same, it doesn't matter if we play a tier-two or tier-three team and that gives us a lot of consistency. We put a lot of time and a lot of effort into preparing to be this ready and we never underestimate anyone. I think that makes a really big difference, we haven't won that many trophies, we only won one, right? You can't really call us the only elite team in my opinion, we need to bring home some trophies before we can call ourselves that. Overall I am really proud of our consistency, but it's time for some trophies as well.

Last time you were here, you got to the final and it was sort of rough at the end. Will we see you in the final once again competing for the trophy?

I hope so. That was the goal when we came here, to win it all. I think that having a really rough time in the group stage has helped us in a way, we have grown a lot as a team and it's something you bond over once you get over that hurdle — nothing can basically stop you, or at least that's the feeling. The goal is to win for sure.

So was it the classic, lose one game, go to the lower bracket so you have more games to practice?

[laughing] In a sense yeah, but also the schedule of the whole event is really rough. We've basically traveled here basically the day after we finished at the RMR, something like that. It's the same for every team, so it's really rough and you can't practice that much. You can use these officials as practice as well, and I think that helped us at least.