salazar: "If you said we might be the only Danish team at the Major, I wouldn't believe you"

ECSTATIC defied the odds and became the first Danish team to qualify for the PGL Major Copenhagen.

ECSTATIC came into the Europe RMR as heavy underdogs, being the third-lowest ranked team in arguably the more stacked of the two groups and having precious little LAN experience within the squad.

Despite the odds being against them ECSTATIC triumphed and claimed a spot at their home Major, taking down the likes of Monte — albeit without Viktor "⁠sdy⁠" Orudzhev — and OG along the way.

After an emotional victory over Guild Eagles that secured his team's spot in Copenhagen, Jason "⁠salazar⁠" Salazar sat down for a quick chat with HLTV to talk about how much qualification means to him.

Date	Matches
PGL CS2 Major Copenhagen 2024 Europe RMR B
19/02/2024	Monte Finished 9:13 ECSTATIC	Match
19/02/2024	MOUZ Finished 13:8 ECSTATIC	Match
20/02/2024	ECSTATIC Finished 13:11 OG	Match
21/02/2024	Apeks Finished 2:1 ECSTATIC	Match
22/02/2024	ECSTATIC Finished 2:1 Guild Eagles	Match

If you do not see the SoundCloud embed above, you can listen to the full interview here.

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Congratulations! How are you feeling?

I don't actually know what to say, it's just surreal. I think coming into the tournament of course we believed in ourselves, but making the Major is a dream for us all. It's just amazing.

Is it even more special being the home Major in Copenhagen?

Yeah, of course. A home Major, the first Major in Copenhagen, and first Major in CS2. It's an honor to be able to play the Major.

Does it feel a little more special as well knowing you're the first full-Danish team to qualify? Depending on how Astralis does, you might be the only full Danish team there.

Yeah, of course. If you said to me we would be the only full Danish team qualifying for the Major, then I wouldn't believe you.

Coming into this RMR you were one of the lower-ranked teams, and you also had the harder group, being in group B. What were your thoughts coming into the RMR?

Our thoughts were mainly just to focus on ourselves and play our game, because we know we can do damage. As I said before, this is one of the tournaments with the most upsets and if we just do our thing and play our game and believe in ourselves and just have the good mood when we're playing the games then there's no one that can stop us.

To talk about that series, you kicked off on Ancient and got run over on that map. What was the mood like within the team after that first map?

It was quite quick, I would say. We were just standing like that and were just like "Okay, that was quick," but we just fully reset and believed in ourselves. It was their map pick, [now we] just take our map pick and take it round by round, and then we made it in the end.

Looking forward to the Major itself, what are your thoughts and feelings? How far do you think you can go in Copenhagen?

I don't know really, there's a lot of things that can happen. As long as we just make a good figure out of ourselves, then I'm actually happy, if we're going to win the Major or what else, I don't really know. Of course the dream is to win the Major, but yeah, I think we can do anything.