gla1ve: "I'm not aiming to be a top five team, I want to win trophies"

gla1ve has set ambitious goals for his new journey in ENCE.

ENCE have undergone a monumental shakeup over the past week, having parted ways with long-time IGL and coach duo Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer and Eetu "⁠sAw⁠" Saha. Four-time Major winner Lukas "⁠gla1ve⁠" Rossander is the man the European squad have turned to as their caller.

One of the most decorated leaders in CS:GO, success has eluded gla1ve in recent years, and the barren streak led to Astralis benching the Dane in June after a seven-year association. Now he will pair up with Jakub "⁠kuben⁠" Gurczyński as he embarks upon his first journey in an international team.

gla1ve took some time out of his preparations for Elisa Masters Espoo to speak with HLTV, and he discussed the end of his time in Astralis, what it has been like joining ENCE, and his goals for ENCE's future.

If the embed above does not show for you, listen to the audio version here.

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First things first, how does it feel to have joined ENCE?

Yeah it feels good! It’s a long time coming because I have been looking for a team for some time, so I was really happy when we got to an agreement with ENCE. Now I can just fully focus on working at a new place and for me, it was also really important to be here from the start of CS2 so I don’t get too far behind everybody else. Now I'm here, and I'm really happy.

Can you tell me about any other options you had and why you chose ENCE in the end?

I don’t think I can tell you what other options I had, but I had some different kind of options. For me ENCE was the best place because here I felt like I could use my skills to build the team in the future, so if people are deciding to leave the team or they are selling players and stuff like that, I have a say in what players are coming in.

I was not sure if I would join with kuben or with sAw, but in the end it became kuben, and I had some talks with him and he was a factor as well in wanting to come here, because I think he is a really good coach.

When ENCE did the announcement, they mentioned that you had some meetings with kuben. What kind of things did you talk about in those meetings?

We talked about a lot of things, we talked about things outside the game and also inside the game. I would say mainly inside the game because we needed to understand if we have the same view of the game and if we have the same expectations of where we can go, tactical-wise, stuff like that.

I think that we could be able to contribute to each other a lot, because he has some ways he sees things and I have a little bit of a different way, but I think we can learn from eachother and it can be really good in the future.

Just to look back a little bit, obviously you spent a very long time in Astralis, what was it like at the end of your time there? I saw the documentary they released, and I remember there was this one bit…

I didn’t actually watch it myself, so you will have to explain (chuckles).

Maybe you will remember this then, maybe you won’t. There was a team meeting and you were asking if people could not make jokes and bring the team down. What was the atmosphere like at the end of your time in Astralis?

Of course things changed when we lost the core of the team. The last two years were pretty hectic with a lot of players coming out and coming in, so it was a lot of work and of course the team chemistry was also changing. That’s something you need to be aware of, so everybody is feeling good in the team, and as a leader you need to take control of those kind of things so you know everyone will be happy in the team and be able to perform.

I tried to do that, but of course it’s not always the easiest task, it’s human beings you have to deal with, they have their way of behaving themselves and you have to make space for that as well. You need to let everybody have their own space to behave like they want, but you have to be inside some kind of box as well.

How do you feel about the way your time at Astralis ended? You are one of the most successful CS:GO IGLs of all time, and then towards the end of your Astralis time it was a bit rough, how do you feel about it when reflecting on it?

Times at the end could have been better, we didn’t really play that good and when we played good, it didn’t last that long. A lot of ups and downs I would say. In the end I thought we had a really good team but still we didn’t manage to bring the results, and of course I understand that they wanted to go into a new direction. I think actually it was also the best for me, to get into another team. I think, for me, international teams will be the future, and ENCE is a really good start.

We’ll turn back to ENCE now. We’ve spoken a bit about the process, talking to kuben in those meetings, so how do you feel about the tools at your disposal here? When you saw these four players, what were your thoughts heading into it?

It’s a really really skilled team, huge individual skill, and they understand the game a lot, they are really good at contributing to the IGL and saying how they think the round should be played. They have a lot of different views on things, and as an IGL you can actually learn something and it’s good for you, you don’t always have the same view on everything.

I’m happy to be here, they are really good guys, I knew that already because I talked to Snappi about it, how they were and how they are playing, stuff like that. I knew what I was coming into in-game wise at least, but not too much out of game, but they are really good guys and I am happy to be here.

In the past ENCE have maybe seemed to have a bit of a looser style in general, whilst you are known as being a little bit more of a structured IGL. Is there any sense that you are going to have to adapt the way you lead and call based on these players?

I actually think that they had a pretty strict style before, they were playing with a lot of structure, I think almost the same as we had in Astralis, if not even more sometimes. For me it’s about mixing the playstyles with kuben coming in, he has one way he wants to play, but this I think is mostly for the future. For right now, we don’t want to change a lot of stuff because it will be like one big mess, because we only had one week, five days of practice I think. We will take it chill and in the future we will start to implement some new stuff, me and kuben, but for now we will not bring in too much new stuff.

It’s funny you mentioned Snappi because I wanted to ask you about him. Two Danish IGLs, you mentioned you spoke to him before you joined, what is it going to be like for you filling his shoes? Because a lot of positive things have been said about how Snappi led ENCE, about the way he helped build up teams without the most resources. Is there any pressure on you?

Yeah of course there is some pressure, because Snappi had been doing really good in ENCE and I know him personally, he is a good guy as well. Of course there will be some pressure. For me, I don’t really think about how they did before, I think about we will do in the future when we start to implement the new stuff that me and kuben have been talking about.

I’m not aiming to be a top five team, I want to start to win trophies again, so that is our goal. We should not just settle with everything they have and hope for the best, we should also try to implement some of the things that we think are correct.

Was it helpful to be replacing someone like Snappi because you had someone to talk to? Does that make it easier to pick ENCE, and come in and hit the ground running?

Yeah I think so. It was good to have some talks with Snappi, I knew that he was probably not going to stay in ENCE and I talked to him about if I should come and stuff like that. He said he thought it would be a good fit, and he’s pretty good at scouting players, so now he scouted an IGL leader for his old team right? (laughs). Of course we are helping each other as much as we can, we talk sometimes out of the game, so yeah, I am happy.

A lot of people look at you as the GOAT IGL in CS:GO, right? Transitioning to a new game now in CS2, does that give you any extra pressure, or maybe even motivation, to prove that you’ve still got it and that you can still be one of the best IGLs in the world?

Yeah I think it does. I don’t think too much about CS:GO, but for me I just want to prove that I am able to be in a top team in CS2 and be a really good IGL. I know that I have achieved some huge things in CS:GO but that’s not really on my mind, because that is far away now and it’s been a long time since then. Now I am just thinking about the future, and also thinking about being here right now and doing my best.

A few more questions and I’ll let you go. Obviously we have the CS2 Major coming up in Copenhagen, that’s going to be quite a big and important thing for you being Danish. How important is it in your mind to get ENCE to a level where you can compete really well at that tournament and go as far as possible?

Yeah it’s really important I think, my goal is to win trophies so if we cannot do good at Majors, it’s not going to be satisfying of course. One of my goals is the Majors, but also all of the tier one tournaments, we need to be able to win those as well.

How are you feeling about this tournament? I know it’s early days yet, you say you haven’t had long to practice, so have you set any goals for this tournament, or is it just turn up, be competitive, and play the best you can?

Yeah I think just turn up, and it’s good to learn each other because we have BLAST World Finals, which is a really big tournament coming up later in the year, the last tournament of the year. For us this is kind of a practice tournament, but of course we have expectations that we’re going to do well because we have really good players and a good understanding of the game, so if we’re not doing well, we need to do something different.

I’m pretty satisfied so far with every one of the players, and also the coach, so I’m really looking forward to starting playing.

Is it good to play a tournament this early, or would you rather have had more time to practice?

I think that’s tough to say actually. In a perfect world probably this tournament should be in two to three weeks, when we had more time to practice together, then we go to this tournament, then we have BLAST World Finals. But that’s a perfect world right, because then you have a practice tournament.

Some would say that it’s probably better not to play this tournament, because if this doesn’t go well, maybe people can give you some hate and stuff, but I don’t really care too much. I know that for me this is a transition period, I just started in my first international team ever, I need to learn callouts on six different maps and I need to learn a lot of new tactic names. I don’t want to make it too hard for the other four guys, it’s one big transition period, so if we don’t do that well here I won’t be that sad. But of course I still have high ambitions still, and I want us to win.