xertioN: "I couldn't find my footing in our system with siuhy [at the beginning]"

MOUZ breezed past FURIA in the opening round of the ESL Pro League S18 Playoffs.

MOUZ have been the most successful organization in terms of promoting their academy to their main team. Four of their players came from the youth setup, while coach Dennis "⁠sycrone⁠" Nielsen also secured a promotion at the beginning of 2022.

That means that MOUZ have an incredibly young squad, one that needed to settle in to Kamil "⁠siuhy⁠" Szkaradek's calling style after his off-season move from GamerLegion. The early-season results have been inconsistent, but MOUZ looked to have hit their stride in a dominant win against FURIA.

After their victory against the Brazilians, academy graduate Dorian "⁠xertioN⁠" Berman sat down with HLTV to discuss his early struggles of playing under siuhy, their upcoming match against FaZe, and the impact David "⁠frozen⁠" Čerňanský has on the team.

Congratulations on your victory, it seemed very comfortable from here. How was it from your perspective?

We didn't have much time to warm up because it took a little longer for Astralis to unpack or something. I think we played a really good game, and we came into it really sharp and prepared, which is something that we talked about before the game. I'm just happy we won.

Next up for you in the bracket is FaZe, who are in a bit of a slump. How do you feel coming into that game?

Well, I think Faze are in a weird boat. They're kind of similar to NAVI, but I think they're still a little bit better than them in a way. Both of these teams are titans, they are title contenders at any moment. Even if they are not in good form, they just need to pick up their game. So I think it will be a really good game, and I'm just looking forward to beating them so we can get some more experience.

Talking about your performance here in Malta, what do you think your team can achieve?

I think we are in a game-to-game mood. In Cologne, we had a lot of expectations because practice was going so well. But we're still a very young team, we have a really bright future, and I think that's the most important thing to focus on. The way we played today just shows how good we are already, we just have to play explosive and dynamic like today, and we will do pretty well.

You guys played a lot of online matches after Cologne, and you showed up-and-down form. Why do you think that was?

I can say that we had a pretty rough period, at least from my perspective. I couldn't find my footing in our system with siuhy. So when we came into this tournament, we had a really good talk, me and him, about the fact that we need to work well together, which we always did in the past. So I feel like we have a good synergy now, as we did before, and I'm just excited to work with him. I think that we are on a good path now, we just have to keep going.

After the talk with siuhy, do you think you are now closer to the playstyle that you had in MOUZ NXT?

I think it's an evolution because as individuals, myself, torzsi, and Jimpphat, we all improved a lot. And obviously frozen is a world-class player, so having him in a team is going to change everything no matter what because he's amazing. I think siuhy improved his calling in Gamer Legion a lot. He's still the same guy, a funny guy, but he has more experience. We're having fun like in NXT, I would say, we're enjoying each other's company, and I think it's a pretty good system we have now.

How important is frozen for your team? Especially now that you've added Jimpphat, who is incredibly young.

Yeah, it's very important to have him. I've matured a lot in my time on the main team, so I'm a bit different than I was in the academy as a person, too. But frozen is always there to calm us down, and he's also there to crack jokes when it's needed.

He's finding a really good balance to kind of be the adult in our team, and we work really well with everyone. We talked about the fact I don't want him to be too much of a father figure, I want him to enjoy our company as well. He's finding a really good balance and he's very important in our team.

Wednesday is close, and CS2 is about to be released. What are your feelings about the game?

I think I share this opinion with the other players that it's not ready to be a competitive game yet. People compare it to the release of CS:GO, but we're like eleven years in the future from when CS:GO was released. The technology is so much different, so I would expect a better game already. It's not necessarily ready for competitive, and if they release it, we will just have to see how it will look. But I think the first months will be a bit rough for everyone.

The mechanics don't feel so good. They feel similar to CS:GO, but the tick rate is a bit weird. I've also played it, and it doesn't feel so good. I feel like you have peekers advantage in everything you do, and that's just a really bad thing for CS because that will take out a lot of strategy out of the game. People will just peek everything now. But it's a new game, and I'm really happy we have a new game. It's exciting, but there are a lot of changes that need to be made.