HooXi interview: G2’s consistency issues, jks’ removal, 2024 goals

The Danish skipper opened up about G2's rollercoaster of a year and the recent roster changes.

Rasmus "⁠HooXi⁠" Nielsen felt a little bit of mixed feelings when asked to sum up G2’s season. On the one hand, he had got to savor incredible highs as the team won IEM Katowice and IEM Cologne, two of the three biggest tournaments of the year. But at the same time, there had also been painful lows, and G2 find themselves out of the top 5 in the world rankings as the Counter-Strike scene rumbles on toward the Copenhagen Major.

Consistency is the keyword for 2024, HooXi told HLTV on the last day of the BLAST Premier World Final. It had been less than 48 hours since G2’s season came to an end, and the memory of the defeat to Natus Vincere still stings. Still, HooXi won’t let the “stupid mistakes” his team made during that series take away from everything they did right in Abu Dhabi. “I think we played really well 95 percent of the time,” he said.

The Danish in-game leader is optimistic about the team’s future and the partnership he can forge with Wiktor "⁠TaZ⁠" Wojtas, who has just been installed as the new head coach. He believes that the Polish veteran is the sort of authoritative figure that the team needs right now, explaining that Jan "⁠Swani⁠" Müller had a hard time being the bad guy. “Wiktor has been an IGL, he has been in the game for a long time, and he knows when people need to hear what they don’t want to hear.”

The BLAST Premier World Final was G2’s first LAN event after bringing Nemanja "⁠nexa⁠" Isaković back into the lineup. HooXi shared his thoughts on the controversial response to Justin "⁠jks⁠" Savage’s removal and reiterated that the Australian is not the type of player that the team needs now, despite his fragging prowess. “There were some other qualities we needed on this team,” HooXi explained, stressing that everyone is still on good terms with jks.

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As he turns his attention towards the Copenhagen Major, HooXi said that winning the event in his home country is his main target for 2024, even joking that he would give up the rest of the season for it. He quickly added that the team wouldn’t be satisfied with winning only one tournament, and that making more deep runs, on top of hoisting trophies, is the goal. “We don’t want to have the low lows we’ve had, and we want to keep having those high highs.”

This was your first full year playing at the highest level. How would you sum it up?

I think the headline should be, ‘High highs and low lows.’ Looking back on it, results-wise, I cannot be disappointed. I think that winning Katowice and Cologne in one year is something that not a lot of people get to do. Overall, the only thing... I would not say regret; the only thing I’m a bit sad about is that our consistency is not where I want it to be. That’s something we will work on next year.

Can you tell me about your adaptation to a tier 1 team? You were playing for Copenhagen Flames, a team that didn’t have a very big fanbase, and it’s not like you took gradual steps until you reached G2. You went from Copenhagen Flames to one of the biggest and most popular organizations in the world. Has it been hard for you sometimes to get used to everything surrounding it?

Definitely. I spent my first week in G2 trying to answer every DM I got on Twitter and Instagram. I spent maybe ten hours a day writing DMs. It’s just impossible to make everyone happy and try to respond to everything. That was the first learning experience for me, that I couldn’t do that. And then, of course, the pressure… So many people are following you, cheering for you, and so many people are betting on you, and they lose their money and get mad. For me, it’s so hard to see a line like today in the signing session and know that there’s maybe 50 to 100 people who won’t get an autograph because there’s no time for it. And that kind of breaks my heart. I just want to make everyone happy. But yeah, it was not an easy transition. I think I also underestimated it a bit.

Last year, you had a rough start to your tenure with G2. You didn’t make the Major, but then you won the BLAST World Final, so you kind of ended the year on a good note. This year, it was the exact opposite. You won two of the biggest tournaments of the year but you still end the year on a disappointing note. What can you say about that contrast?

I think those are two very different situations. Last year, we were still a new team and all that, but definitely not making the Major was like… It doesn’t matter if we had been together for two minutes, we should have made the Major. And this year, a new game came out. Everything is a bit… weird, I would say. There are a lot of roster changes, not only with our team, but also with every other team. I think everything is just a bit up in the air. Honestly, I have mixed feelings from this tournament because I think we have so much potential and I feel that we played so well most of the time and then we just… threw away the game, honestly. I think that if we fix a few details, and with Wiktor, TaZ, coming in, the future is looking bright.

I would say, and I guess most people would agree with me on this, that you were the third-best team of the year. Does it feel like it, considering the way the season ended?

I think we can even say that we were the second-best team of the year.

I’d agree with you if maybe you had won the BLAST World Final and FaZe hadn't reached the final here. I’d say it’s close between you and FaZe.

I don’t put much thought into it, honestly. All I know is that we won two of the biggest tournaments of the year. And that’s enough for me. If we’re the best team of the year, if we’re the second- or third-best, it doesn’t matter.

In your eyes, was this year a success?

I think that, at the start of the year, if someone had said, ‘You will win both Katowice and Cologne this year. Will you be happy at the end of the year?’ I would have said yes. So I think, overall, yes. I would have liked to have been in more finals and to have lifted one more trophy, maybe a smaller tournament, like Gamers8 or something. Or even Sydney for Justin [jks] would have been the icing on the cake.

Why do you think that the team has struggled for consistency, especially in CS2?

I don’t know if it’s especially in CS2. I think everyone struggles with consistency in CS2 because it’s so new and there have been a lot of roster changes. But in CS:GO… Honestly, I think a lot of it comes down to my playstyle. I don’t add too much structure, I’m more like giving freedom and responsibility, and we have some fundamentals that we have to live up to that are very demanding. If I had the answer for you, I would have changed it already.

It’s a bit hard, we are trying some things out to get more consistency. We are trying to add a bit more structure to see if it will lead to more consistency. We will see now, also with Wiktor, how it will go. With Swani, a lot of our T side was my responsibility alone, while he was responsible for the CT sides, together with NiKo and huNter-. With a coach that is working both sides, I’m getting a bit more help, and I think that’s good.

And some help from nexa as well, with the mid-round calling, right?

Yeah, nexa definitely brings some consistency in terms of communication and mood, while Justin was more consistent when it came to mechanical skill. We will give nexa some time to develop again. He was an IGL for four years, not focusing on himself, so he needs some time to get back into that mindset and role.

I was talking yesterday with rain and I asked him why he thinks that Vitality and FaZe have been the best teams in CS2, and he told me that these are the two teams that have been working the hardest since the game was released. Do you think that's the case?

Obviously, I don't know how hard they have worked (laughs), but I think we had an unfortunate period where the team was kind of in a limbo with the whole Falcons thing, Justin being in and out, what was going on, who we should get, and all that stuff. And we basically skipped some tournaments at the start of CS2 and I think that held us back a bit. But I think that we’ve been working really hard since we got back on track. I know I’ve been working really hard myself, putting in 12 to 16 hours a day.

I think FaZe kind of gave up at the end of CSGO and started focusing on CS2 before everyone else, and I think that paid off for them. It’s a hard decision to make. And Vitality… What I have always respected about them is just how consistent they are. They are always consistent, and they have a good structure built around the team. I think that’s why they are up there.

At what point did you start to consider making some changes?

It all started when Swani came into the team and we lost Rémy [XTQZZZ]. Swani was not meant to be a head coach or anything like that, but we decided to give him the chance and see if it worked. I think he has some personality traits that just don’t fit with being a head coach, and I think that put a lot of pressure on him and that’s also why I think he decided to step down. It’s just the pressure. So from that part, I think that has always been a work in progress in a way.

And with Justin, it was like… He was obviously good in big matches and big tournaments, but he had some issues that I’ll not go into further detail about. He had some issues that we had been working on for a long time but that we never really saw much progress in. There were some other qualities we needed on this team. Justin, of course, can add other things to another team that needs his qualities. I still love Justin. I think he’s a great guy. I think he’s a great player as well. He’s just not exactly what this team needed.

Can you walk me through how that decision was made? What was the process like? I spoke with NiKo, and he said that he played no part in the decision and that it came from the management.

I think it’s dangerous to comment on this, first of all, because no matter what I say, some people will find a way to make it sound bad, right? But I will say that in G2, we constantly evaluate after each tournament, even after practice days, what’s going well, what’s going badly, what the team needs, if we’re seeing progress here and there. And it was not something one guy or a few guys were in on and then it just happened.

The staff is asking us for feedback, and we give it. What gets through to the staff, and what goes through their mind, we don’t know. In the end, it’s the decision of the staff, the coaching staff, the management and all that. It’s not the players who decide. But of course, we voice our opinions during tournaments and practice about what’s good and bad, and they take that into consideration. I don’t think you can point a finger at one person and say, ‘This guy killed Justin.’ Which is what the community wants, it looks like.

But at least a decent chunk of the negativity comes from the fact that, apparently - and Justin hasn’t said anything about it - he was being kept in the dark for quite some time about what was going on in the team. Is there anything you can say about that?

No, I can’t really comment on that. That’s between the G2 staff and Justin.

We wrote an article in March that mentioned that Justin is the player who improves the most in arena matches, when compared to group stage matches. Don't you think that a player like that is necessary for a team that wants to challenge for titles?

I think that’s a quality he has, for sure. The thing is, I don't think it's even about him getting better. I think it’s about other people getting worse and him staying the same. I think Justin is just always stable. Same level, always. You never see him, like, get overhyped. I think that people get caught up by the atmosphere. They are not necessarily nervous, but sometimes they might get too eager. Justin is just stable the whole way, which is a quality of his. So I definitely think that he can be a good asset for another team. But for this team, we just needed something else.

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Do you think, looking at the way that the team played in this tournament, that the team is more structured now? Because I spoke with NiKo, he said that Justin was getting some star roles and the team needed something a little bit different. So do you think that the team is now playing more structured, more as a team now?

I think the roles fit better, definitely. I don’t think you could call Justin’s roles star roles, and I don’t think that’s necessarily what NiKo meant. It’s just that I think Justin’s best role is the star role, that’s the thing. He’s a soldier, you know? He does everything you ask him to do, but he doesn’t enjoy it, and that’s something that’s important to me. I often ask my teammates, ‘What do you like to do? What do you want to do?’ If you enjoy what you’re doing, you will do it better, for sure. I don’t think a lot of people necessarily enjoy throwing nades for everyone all the time and going in first and whatever, like I’m doing. I enjoy it because I enjoy winning, and I think that’s the best way to do it. But I think that’s a waste of Justin’s qualities.

Is everyone on good terms with Justin?

Yeah, I’m still good friends with Justin. I think that everyone likes Justin as well. He’s a good guy. If there’s any bad blood, I don’t know about it.

And did he understand the decision? Because he has been very quiet on social media. He hasn’t posted anything there.

He has been quiet on social media since the day I met him. So nothing has changed. (laughs) If he understood the decision? He definitely accepted it and took it well. But I don’t know if he understood the reason. I haven’t really talked to him about that.

Tell me about that 1v4 clutch against Aleksib. You came in so hot on that map. Do you think the players were too confident at that point?

I definitely think we were super confident. That specific round with Aleksi is like… It’s everyone’s fault, in a way. Overall, there is not one person to blame. I think we played really well 95 percent of the time, and then if we removed these stupid mistakes, like really stupid mistakes, and they’re so easy to remove as well, then we probably would have won that game.

Do you think that was a turning point in that game? Because I don’t think you played the same way after that.

The first round we lost, we had a good situation. The second round was the Aleksi 1v4. The next round we had a good situation again but we threw it away. Those three rounds, that’s what threw away the game. I talked to nexa specifically, he was a little bit out of it after the Aleksi round because he felt it had been his fault, and that’s something he has to be stronger about, mentally, next time. I think we should still have closed it out after we lost three or four stupid rounds.

What was the mood like after that round? Did it change significantly? Because it felt like it, from the outside, at least.

We could not do anything but laugh about it. It was so stupid that we could only laugh. But I think we were really good this tournament, no matter what happened, no matter how badly we fucked up or how rough it looked. We were still keeping the mood up and staying in it, so I was actually really happy about that. That’s something we have struggled with before.

You said that Swani doesn’t have some traits that are necessary to be a coach of a team like yours. Do you think that things would have been different if you had TaZ behind you? Because he has been through some of the same situations.

That’s tough to say. But I think the most important is having TaZ in the day-to-day, like practice and stuff, and that we can work with him and I can get some help on the T sides. One of the qualities that Swani was missing is that, as a coach, you need to be the bad guy sometimes. And you need to be the guy who is not afraid to tell people, ‘This is not good enough and you need to step up.’ Things like that. He just wants to be friends with everyone. He’s such a nice guy, and that’s good for a lot of things, but not for a head coach. Wiktor has been an IGL, he has been in the game for a long time, and he knows when people need to hear what they don’t want to hear.

TaZ is going to be the third coach since you’ve been with G2. Why do you think it has been so hard to find a permanent coach for the team?

I don’t know. I think that Rémy (XTQZZZ) got off to a bad start with the whole thing with Aleksi. It was really hard for him with an international team because his English was not that good at first with Aleksi. With me, he also struggled a bit. Then I think he just decided that something had to happen and that it was better if he left. Then we got Swani and we decided to give him a chance, and I think he is grateful for that. He was exactly what we needed at the time.

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We needed a guy who would give us space to develop our own way of playing. Now, maybe we have had our way too much and we need a guy who is ready to say when it’s too much. But I can’t tell you why it has been hard to find that one perfect guy.

What have you discussed with TaZ since he joined the team? What do you think that he brings to the table?

Right now, he’s here mostly to observe, see how we do things and what he would like to change for the future. During the break, we’re going to talk about what we are going to do. We have to build a new relationship, hopefully a good one. I think he will try to bring some of his ideas. It’s not like he will change everything. He will still want to use the system I play and the system we enjoy, because if he’s coming in and he’s forcing something upon me, then I just don’t work and I shouldn’t be here. I think that he will start by trying to fix our fundamentals a bit, and that will be the biggest thing.

You beat MOUZ, who made it to the semi-finals, and you had a very close series against FaZe. Do you think that these performances showed that the team has a high ceiling and that it’s just about working on your base level?

I think we weren’t even close to our ceiling in these two games. I think we are on par with Vitality, FaZe, and all these other teams, and I’m not even surprised with that. I think people put too much effort into saying that we are shit without Justin and all that stuff. I think we are at least as good as we were, and we will probably be better with time. And yeah, I think we can work on both our peak and base levels.

What is your opinion about the Danish Counter-Strike scene? With Heroic moving away from a Danish lineup, what does it say about the state of the scene?

I think we’re still producing a lot of talent and a lot of good players. I think it’s not only about the state of the Danish scene, but also the state of the Counter-Strike scene. I can’t remember how many teams there are, but at least the top five teams are international. I think that’s just the way CS is going. I think that there will still be a good Danish team for a long time, like Astralis right now. I think the line-up has huge potential. But I don’t know if we can have three or four teams at a Major again. I think the international reach is just too strong right now.

Maybe one of the biggest issues right now is the lack of experienced IGLs. Do you think about going back to Denmark and helping young players succeed after you’re done playing for international teams?

I just think about G2 right now and what I can do to achieve as much as possible. Sure, I would love to play with some of the same guys from Flames when the time comes, but I haven’t put much thought into that.

You said at the beginning that, if someone had told you at the start of the year that you would win Katowice and Cologne, you would be really happy. Right now, what would you be happy with, looking ahead to the 2024 season?

I think I would scratch the whole year if I could win the Copenhagen Major, then I don't care. That’s all. If you can give me that one, that's good. (laughs) That’s the major goal for me.

In terms of expectations and goals for 2024, you're putting all eggs in that basket, is that it?

For me, it would mean a lot. For the team, we wouldn’t be happy with just winning one tournament, obviously. Even if it’s a Major. It would still mean a lot to us. But, as I said, I think the main goal for us is to try to find consistency. We want to be in more finals, we also want to win more tournaments, of course, but consistency is the keyword for us. We don’t want to have the low lows we’ve had, and we want to keep having those high highs.