jabbi: "We proved a lot to ourselves at this tournament and we know we can trust each other"

Jakob "⁠jabbi⁠" Nygaard spoke to HLTV after HEROIC lifted the BLAST Premier Spring Final trophy and he became the HLTV MVP of the tournament.

Nearly seven months after hoisting the Fall Final trophy in Copenhagen, HEROIC finally returned to winning ways with a run to the title at the BLAST Premier Spring Final in Washington, D.C., beating Vitality 2-1 in the grand final.

jabbi was named the HLTV Most Valuable Player of the tournament following the match and we got to speak to the 19-year-old, the only HEROIC player to have an HLTV MVP to his name, about the achievement and breaking their title-less run.

Congratulations on winning the final. It was a long time coming, seven months since you won the Fall Final and there have been a few opportunities missed since then. Tell me what this means to you guys to finally get over the line.

There could not be a better way to end the season. We have been so close many times now and we have kinda choked, as people said, in some of the finals, and also semi-finals. But yesterday we got over the little curse of beating underdogs in the semi-final, so we proved a lot to ourselves at this tournament and we just know we can trust each other, do all the small things we talk about in the team, and we can win trophies.

Yesterday I talked to sjuush and he was saying you wanted to prove you're the better team than Vitality. On the two maps that you won it was fairly convincing. What was the gameplan going into this and what made the difference today?

I always think the team that plays the first semi-final has a little bit of an advantage. We got home yesterday, we watched the game that we played on that day through, because we felt like if we were just playing our game we will win. People can't do anything against our style if we're just on point and doing the things right.

That was the main thing that we thought about today. We didn't really prepare that much for the game, we obviously had some prep off the maps, but we didn't have time to prepare for Inferno, for example. We just do our comfortable things that we knew we are good at and we just listened to cadiaN on T side.

There were a couple of different ways the veto could have gone. They could have picked Nuke, or they could have also decided to let it go to Overpass on the third map instead of Inferno, which is a pretty comfortable map for you. Were you surprised by that, and did it affect the preparation?

I think the last few times we played them on Overpass we won really big, so we were pretty sure they were going to take Inferno, also our Inferno has been bad the last three or four games. We were pretty prepared for the veto, yeah.

You've found consistency inside the team this year and this has elevated the team to another level. What do you think has been making the difference for you?

Yeah, it's just getting comfortable in our things. Obviously, it's a style you have to get used to when you play like this, so I'm really confident in how we play now and how I should do my thing to help the team and help my individual plays. I know where I can take space in specific rounds and stuff like that, and I think that just helps a lot instead of me asking every round what I should do. Just playing my own game.

This is your first HLTV MVP award. What does it mean to be titled the best player of the tournament?

That's obviously an honor. I didn't really expect to get it, I think some maps I really had a good start and then I just crumbled, also in the group stage. But obviously I am really happy and it's a big achievement for myself.

There's this uncertainty looming around the CS:GO scene with CS2 coming up, which we don't know when it will come and what the scene will look like. Is there going to be a conversation where you will talk about how to approach the change, or are you still waiting for more information to come out?

Yeah, we are still waiting for more information. I hope they will give some kind of information about when it will come out so you have time to practice, or they will give us the information four weeks before a tournament before they switch, because then you will have time to practice CS2. You can't just go directly from CS:GO to CS2, so that's just what we are waiting for.