karrigan: "He's a different kind of guy, nobody can replace RobbaN"

Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen is stoic about moving forwards without talismanic coach Robert "⁠RobbaN⁠" Dahlström.

Not only did FaZe lose their long-serving analyst, Viacheslav "⁠innersh1ne⁠" Britvin, in the off-season, but they were also rocked by the departure of head coach RobbaN on the eve of their first game back.

karrigan makes no bones about how big of an impact RobbaN's departure will have on the team, nor the fact that the timing was less than ideal. Regardless, the Dane is stoic about the sudden change, and believes his team are capable of forging a positive path forwards.

Having put away a surprisingly solid OG side in their first game at BLAST Premier Spring Finals, karrigan took some time out with HLTV to discuss the game, and more importantly give his insight on the loss of RobbaN.

Congratulations, what did you make of the game?

I make it that the first half was a little rough (smiles), I think there was obviously some rust. We extended the break to have some extra days off so the practice hasn't been a lot, and obviously you've seen a lot of things happening behind the doors, surprisingly. So yeah we took this game as a warmup, and I think we had good control on the last three halves of the game.

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Judging from what you've said about extending your break, maybe you were expecting it to be that close, particularly in the first game?

I mean it's the start of the season, I think every time we come into BLAST, like last season, we are doing everything we can. Right now it's not where we need to be, but the focus is on Cologne. We need to be top six here to qualify to make our calendar easier, and obviously to play in Copenhagen later this year, so the goal is to qualify. How we do it doesn't matter, as long as we improve, any mistakes we can fix for the upcoming days. So it's a bootcamp tournament basically, and I think we have three days off to get warmed up into the next game.

You mentioned it earlier, but we have to talk about the elephant in the room: RobbaN has quit coaching. How surprising was it for you? You said on the broadcast it wasn't something you were expecting, was it really as sudden as finding out via the Tweet, for example?

No no, not that sudden (laughs). We started the season and then RobbaN told us he was stepping down, for whatever reasons, he will tell you guys when he is ready. It came as a surprise, it wasn't planned, and that's also why we didn't do any changes during the break or anything.

We will take it day by day, we will see what we can do, and we have to make sure that we take it slow. I think we have a good thing going on right now, and we did with RobbaN as well, so I don't want to change too much from day one to day two. BLAST is the beginning of the season so we will try out different coaches, our analyst left as well so the support team behind us is not the best right now, but I think the team is so good. We are not a new team, we have been playing together for a long time, and everyone knows they need to step up and take up some of the workload for me.

Do you have anyone lined up, any people you have in mind that you are going to try out? Will someone stand behind you at Cologne, and do you know who that might be?

Yeah we've found a guy that we think would be good to trial, both for him and for us, so we will see how it goes. The same goes for the analyst, so we have something behind us right now, but how it's going to look in two or three months we don't know. It's a step in the right direction, we have something behind us to help us, and like I said we are a special team, the way we play and think. We want to take it step by step so when a coach comes in he can implement his stuff, but he has to take care of the team, because everyone in our team, when we had a team talk, believes we are doing the right things. It can also be good to get some outside perspective to help us improve and reach consistency, but obviously it's sad times because everyone in the team loved the way RobbaN did the coaching job.

Was it frustrating to get the news when you did, instead of at the start of the break? It seems like poor timing.

Life happens, right? There's a big reason why he stepped down and everyone accepted it, there's nothing more there. Whether he's ready to tell it, is what it is. There's never good timing in life, you can't have everything perfect, but we understand him and he understands us. We are just doing everything we can now to figure out the future and that's what we're focused on, day by day, tournament by tournament. We are figuring out how we can have a great coaching team behind us. Again (laughs).

Does this impact your goals for the season, does it maybe set you back a little bit, losing your coach? Obviously like we said, the timing isn't great.

We know how it is to be without RobbaN, but now it's final, it's not like one event away as with the Major or BLAST or whatever. So the mood hasn't been the best, but we are doing everything we can to implement the stuff that RobbaN really stood for, to stay positive and never give up, the way he did it. He's going to be with us in spirit.

The goals for the season are the same, it's FaZe Clan, we want to win tournaments, but also the season is strange. We know CS2 is going to come at some point, so these few months before CS2 comes out we will try to figure out having a good coaching staff behind us for the upcoming game. The main goal is to do everything we can in CS:GO, and then do good in the next season and CS2.

Last question and then I'll let you go: are you going to look for somebody similar to RobbaN in your replacement coach? Obviously you have talked a lot about how important he was, particularly in the mental and psychological side of the game. Are you going to look for that in a replacement as well?

I think it's very hard to replace RobbaN one-to-one. The personality was very unique, one of the best personalities I ever knew in esports and in life. He's a different kind of a guy, so nobody can really replace RobbaN in what he did for the team, he was very unique. But we don't know what direction we are going, we have one guy lined up that we think can fit the team. Whether it works or not, we will wait and see, but we are not bringing in a coach right now who is going to change the whole structure of the team. We want a coach that can grow into us and we can grow into them, obviously many of my years as a caller have been with RobbaN so we had a unique understanding. Now it's time to accept the new reality, and do the best we can with the coaching staff we will have in the future.