sycrone: "There's a bit more pressure on torzsi because we have even younger players now"

MOUZ's coach sat down with HLTV shortly after a double-overtime victory over TheMongolz in the IEM Cologne Play-in's opening round.

MOUZ were one of the more active teams over the off-season, bringing Kamil "⁠siuhy⁠" Szkaradek back into the organization — this time as in-game leader of the main roster — while also promoting Jimi "⁠Jimpphat⁠" Salo after the Finn impressed during his time in the junior division.

The international cohort had a labored start to life with their new roster, being pushed to double overtime by The MongolZ and requiring a sublime 50-bomb from Ádám "⁠torzsi⁠" Torzsás to rescue the best-of-one.

Date	Matches
IEM Cologne 2023 Play-in
26/07/2023	Ninjas in Pyjamas 20:10 MOUZ	Match

HLTV caught up with Dennis "⁠sycrone⁠" Nielsen, MOUZ's coach, after the hard-fought series against the Mongolians. The 27-year-old touched on siuhy's reunion with the organization and what the Pole brings to the table, torzsi's progress, the addition of Jimpphat and how his integration is going, as well as MOUZ's upcoming series with Ninjas in Pyjamas for a spot in IEM Cologne's group stage.

Let's jump into the siuhy move. Bringing someone who was in the academy team, left for GamerLegion, made a Major grand final, and now came back with the main team. How is the reunion?

It's amazing to have Kamil [siuhy] back. He has a long history with me and also with the other players. I'm just excited to work with him moving forward.

Why did you decide to bring him back for dexter. What does he change in the team?

Most of last season wasn't great, except perhaps IEM Dallas, and we thought that maybe it was the time to make some changes with Counter-Strike 2 coming out. There was an opening to perhaps bring him back and we tried to push and make it happen. MOUZ made it happen, which I'm pleased with. It comes on the back of poor results and trying to take it in a different direction.

How is he different to dexter. What will he bring and what will you lose?

Something dexter was really good at is that he's an extremely hard worker. Not that Kamil isn't hard-working, but dexter works hard all of the time. He also brought a lot of calmness and coolness to the server. He's a very chill guy in real life, and he's the same person on the server. With Kamil, it's a bit more chaotic at times and [he's] also a little bit younger. He meets the age group of our team, so he clicks really well with them.

Maybe also a bit more aggression and intensity from siuhy?

Yeah, siuhy is definitely a more aggressive player, in general. He used to also be a playmaker, he likes to go first and take risk at times. So between him, torzsi — maybe using him a bit more aggressively —, and Dori [xertioN] we have a lot of entry power now.

torzsi is another topic of conversation. Not just because he dropped 50 kills in a double OT match, but because he was almost out of the team in the summer, right?

I'm not sure I want to comment on all of the rumors, but definitely, at the moment the team was in, we had to consider all of the players we had and if it was worth moving forward with all of them. In the case of torzsi, and when you look at other players, we believe he's far ahead in his development. He understands a lot of concepts about the game already, he clicks well with the guys, and we thought that this reset would do him good. Today was a good showing of that.

One of the things about torzsi is that when he moved up from the academy team it seemed that he never hit the potential he was showing in NXT. Do you think the siuhy move will help unlock that potential in some way?

I think it will. NXT to here was just growing pains, I think it's very rare to see someone instantly step up and perform as before. In the academy league it was only m0NESY outperforming Adam [torzsi] in statistics. I think it will help him a lot, just that those two are getting along well, connecting well.

There's now been a summer break and he's had time to think about things and process a little bit. He knows how he wants to approach this team, he knows what impact he wants to have. Funny enough, there's a bit more pressure on him because we have even younger players now in siuhy and Jimpphat, so now he's one of the experienced and veteran players on the team. But yeah, I think he did really well today.

Talking about young players, Jimpphat is 16. What's it going to be like for him? Rolewise, is he going to take the complicated anchor positions? He struggled a bit on Ramp today, for example. What's his adaptation to the team like?

Just on the roles, I saw this HLTV article about how it'll all end up and stuff. For the last four or five months in NXT, especially on the CT side, he did play different roles than he'll have on this team, but before then, for like three years, he played most of the roles that he has right now.

Having talked to him about it, if we made this move and these would be the roles he'd have to play, he said 'Yeah, that's where I'm most comfortable. In NXT we just needed some star power and then I ended up playing those positions.' I think it also speaks a little about how versatile he is.

I wouldn't say he struggled on Ramp today. I think he had some good impactful rounds, two 3Ks I remember in very crucial moments, and after the game he told me he was a bit nervous. But there's going to be so many more games for him to play here, so all good.

Tell me a bit about the match against TheMongolz. It's a best-of-one against a team that also has a couple of new players, so maybe not so much data on them out there. How did you go into facing this new Mongolz team?

We came into it with as much respect as we could. Also, in the previous Major, siuhy ended up losing to them. We knew they can play quite decently, there's a reason they're here. They changed two players so since then it has been hard to get data on them, but we did find one tournament they played and had a little look there. We tried to make the most of it, but still focused more on ourselves. That's also what we're going to do for most of these games coming forward.

Most teams will have next to no idea how we play. They can maybe estimate positions, but the strats we have, the defaults we run, and all of these things will take some time for people to figure out so we can play our game for the most part and focus on ourselves.

TheMongolz impressed me a lot in the game, even if you try to analyze how they play, when you actually play them they shoot back and have some smart moves. They have good fundamentals in certain situations and it wouldn't surprise me if they push another team here.

Up next is NIP. We saw them at BLAST, just recently, and they made it through their group with the top seed. What do you make of this match? It should be a bit of a tough one for you guys.

It's two international rosters. I think it's going to be an exciting game. headtr1ck is someone we already have a bit of history with. I know k0nfig quite well. It's always fun to play that team and I'm curious what they've been cooking. I'm pretty sure they're curious about what we've been cooking.

What makes it fun for you?

I just enjoy playing and watching the game, that's fun in itself, but there's a spot in the main tournament on the line. Of course we want to be there.

What are your first impressions after your first official map, and now going into a team that has a few more days behind them. How do you think you'll stack up against that? They're probably feeling pretty confident.

They're definitely a team that's more comfortable playing on LAN because they've had BLAST, where they've shown some good results. That will probably be a factor here, but at the same time it'll also be a bit easier to get a read on them because there's some material and we know some of the players, so that's a big plus. Then again, it's a better team than we just played, so we have to be sharper than we were right now. We have to settle the nerves a bit, play cooler, play our game.

What do you think will be the keys of that series?

To play loose.

To play loose?

Yeah. I mean, we'll still play the things we have in our playbook, but be loose about it. I think that's key.

Is that something you talked about in the bootcamp? Is it a bit of a mantra?

No, I wouldn't say it's a mantra.

Just something you need to do against NIP?

It'll definitely be a focus point, to play loose and enjoy the game.