rain on retirement rumors: "I'm not going anywhere"

"I don't know what the fuck everybody is talking about, I'm here to stay," the 28-year-old Norwegian rifler added.

FaZe advanced to the Legends Stage of the BLAST.tv Paris Major with a 3-1 record, defeating FORZE 2-0 in their fourth game with wins on Overpass and Nuke. The European combine started the tournament off with somewhat labored wins over Monte and paiN, and fell to ENCE in their first qualifying match before securing advancement over Andrey "⁠Jerry⁠" Mekhryakov's men.

Håvard "⁠rain⁠" Nygaard was in particularly fine form at the start of the series, dominating on Overpass with a 2.42 impact rating and 124 ADR. We spoke to the Norwegian rifler after the match to discuss FaZe's path through the tournament thus far, what the team have been struggling with recently, and quashed rumors of an impending retirement, something which rain was particularly emphatic about.

rain, you're qualified, how are you feeling? The match ended pretty quickly, so walk me through it a little bit.

We feel pretty good. There are things we need to work on still, but we feel pretty good individually. There's just some team chemistry issues that we need to talk about, but other than that, it's great.

When you say team chemistry issues, can you give me some more insight into that?

I think it's like... the communication is not very clear, it's very chaotic at the moment. It's something that, when we were at our best, we had very calm and clean [communication], and I think we need to work on it a bit.

Does that relate to your start here too, you had some close games against paiN and Monte, they weren't super clean, and you obviously lost a game to ENCE as well. Is that tied to that as well?

Yeah I think that, and maybe people feel a little bit of pressure. It's the last CS:GO Major and everybody wants to do well, right? So everybody has a little bit extra pressure, but it's something that can be worked out. I don't think it comes from close games, even from the start of the games it can happen, so it's something we need to talk about.

You had a really good performance at the start of this series on Overpass, just a classic rain Major buff or what was going on?

Yeah I don't know, everything I did worked, and I played on feeling the entire half basically. It was a good half from me on the CT side, I think our T side could have been a bit cleaner but it is what it is.

You had a really big lead, karrigan was calling a bunch of defaults on the T side, was that to not leak strats or did you just figure you could close it out by defaulting?

When it comes to these matches and we play inexperienced teams, they tend to do mistakes later on in the rounds. Unfortunately for us we kept getting picked off before we came to that stage of the round, so props to them for taking advantage of that. We wanted to end the game a bit too quickly and we did a few mistakes at the start, so it became a bit closer than it was supposed to be.

I wanted to talk a little about Nuke and the CT side you had versus ENCE, that was a really rough first half for you guys. What was going on there, the same issues again?

No, I think... today I think I died five times to zorte AWPing outside, which makes my life very hard. I think there's a counter towards our playstyle, and we also know it, so we have things prepared for the bigger teams for sure. But I just need to reinvent myself a little bit on Nuke in outside, I've been playing the same style for too long now and I need to change it up a bit.

You have two days off now, no game tomorrow and then a media day. Are you going to relax, focus on the next stage, what's the plan?

Actually I have no idea. Maybe go eat some pastries, walk around in Paris, relax a little bit, and then focus for the next stage.

Talking a little about the future here, as you said you guys are feeling a bit of pressure, it's the last CS:GO Major. Having won everything there is to win in CS:GO, what's the motivation for you to win one more title here?

Just cause you've won everything doesn't mean you don't want to win this one, right? This is the final one, it would be really cool to win the final Major of CS:GO, and even get a double Major for us. This one would mean just as much as Antwerp if we win it.

There are people who have been talking about your commitment to CS because you just had a kid, but you're also not the only pro with a kid-

No I'm not!

-huNter- is only one year younger, he also has a kid-

Yeah.

-do you have anything to say about that?

Yeah, I don't know what the fuck everybody is talking about. I also read somewhere that Pimp was talking on the analyst desk that I was planning on retiring as well, there is no plans. I just re-signed a contract with FaZe, I'm here to stay. My family, my wife, everybody is really supportive of what I'm doing. I'm not going anywhere.

Yeah I was going to say, you signed a contract extension late last year for another three years, so really not going anywhere?

No, I'm staying. Counter-Strike is what I love to do and I have the full support of everybody at home, so I'm staying for as long as I feel I can perform.