gla1ve on destroying Astralis: "I wanted to win so badly"

The ENCE captain haunted his old team with a 2.25-rated performance on Ancient.

ENCE have lived through the second day of their debut campaign at the IEM Katowice Play-in, making up for an opening loss to BIG with a series win over Astralis where Lukas "⁠gla1ve⁠" Rossander shone with a godlike performance.

HLTV spoke to the Danish captain after the match about the Ancient showdown against his former team. "I wanted to win so badly," gla1ve said. "This doesn't mean you'll have good games, this can actually be the opposite sometimes, but it feels so amazing."

In the video interview, the 28-year-old also spoke about getting used to life around five Polish teammates including the coach and analyst, and how the new-look ENCE are meshing together, coming from four different schools.

Congratulations on the win against Astralis, a pretty comfortable one and I would say in large part thanks to you on that second map. I think you were 22-4 after the first half of Ancient, and you seemed to be just feeling it against your former organization.

Yeah, of course. I wanted to win so badly, but this doesn't always mean that you'll have good games. This can actually be the opposite sometimes, that you'll have bad games, but it feels so amazing to have a good game against my former teammates.

I really want to get the Polish guys into the arena, and this was like the first step and a really hard one, so I'm extremely happy and proud of everyone.

Yesterday against BIG you ended up falling short, what did you address for today, where you looked a lot more comfortable?

We actually changed quite a lot on Ancient. We realized some stuff that we need to do differently and kind of changing the approach a little bit, I would say, both on CT and T side. I'm extremely happy it worked, it was a bit of a gamble - I think if we didn't change anything we would maybe lose, but it felt really good.

Tell me about your expectations for Katowice in general. You just said that you wanted to get the guys to the arena, but it's still a very new team. How confident are you that you can match up to those hopes?

I mean, if we play like today I think we can go to the arena, but if we play like against BIG it's gonna be hard. It depends on the day right now, we're still like a new team trying to figure out our map pool and stuff like this. This tournament is a bit of a tryout, trying some different stuff.

Of course we're doing everything we can to win, but still, we know it's early days for the team, only three weeks of practice, and the most important tournament for us is the RMR, of course, as for almost every team. But we have five Polish guys, so of course they really want this, and I really want it for them and for me as well. So we're doing everything we can.

Speaking of that, how is your Polish coming along? It feels like you have to blend in somehow.

Yeah, I mean it's going so well, sometimes I'm just talking Polish to them (laughs). No, we are just talking English. When I'm not alive in the round, sometimes I just tell them or they just start speaking Polish and it's working really good. When they speak Polish I can feel like they have really good teamplay and they're winning a lot of clutches in practice when I'm going in front and dying, and 4v5, 2v3, stuff like this. For now it's working out pretty good, everyone is pretty good at English, understanding quickly, talking good, so it's not that big of a deal.

As you said, just three weeks of practice and this roster change came in pretty last minute towards the end of the year before the roster locks hit. How far would you say are you in your development?

I'm not feeling that confident, but I'm not feeling like we are a bad team. I feel like we are a good team but maybe a bit unstable at the moment. I think with time and with the work we'll put in we will be much better in the future. Right now, I feel like we can win against anyone and lose against anyone. You never know, maybe this was the game that is giving us confidence and making us play better every game. Maybe the nerves are a bit shaken off and we start to play better. This is what I hope for, and let's see if it happens.

How is it coming along with finding your identity? You acquired the former 9INE core, but you are the in-game leader and kuben the coach, it's a lot of different ideas coming together.

We are trying to mesh all of the playstyles together, but it's not that simple, right? kuben is coming from one place, three 9INE guys, one from the old ENCE and me from Astralis, different playstyles all over and trying to mesh it a bit. But me and kuben have the biggest say on the T side, and for the CT side we are trying to let the guys work hard and improve it, and me and kuben will start working on the CT side soon as well.

And it seems like at least the Ancient woes that the former 9INE team used to have, at least that's getting better, right?

Yeah. I'm not sure how long the losing streak was, 0-13 or something. It will take some time before we get there, at least.