karrigan: "I don't care if I'm second or eighth; why should it matter who we meet [first]?"

The prospect of meeting Spirit in the quarter-finals leaves karrigan unfazed, as he says it can sometimes be better to meet the best teams early.

FaZe qualified for the PGL Major Copenhagen playoffs after a shaky Elimination Stage, securing their spot following a win in the fifth round over Complexity on Sunday.

They had gotten off to a slow start at the Major and even suffered a 1-13 loss to Eternal Fire in round three, but they came back from the 1-2 start in the best-of-one rounds. A "B game" was enough for FaZe to scrape by Imperial, and the convincing Complexity victory signaled their return to form at just the right time.

Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen spoke to HLTV following FaZe's qualification for the Royal Arena about their lacking individual level throughout the Elimination Stage and withstanding the pressure after the poor start.

"We have been pressured and we haven't cracked, and I think that's the most important thing," he said. "That's what I'm gonna tell the guys and take with us to the playoffs, that it didn't matter we bended; we didn't crack."

Heading into the playoffs, a rematch against Spirit from the IEM Katowice grand final awaits FaZe on Thursday. The possibility of facing the team that had dealt them a tough blow in the one-sided best-of-five did not deter karrigan, who said it might even be better to meet them early.

Date	Matches
PGL CS2 Major Copenhagen 2024
28/03/2024	Spirit 19:55 FaZe	Match

"If you want to win the Major we have to beat Spirit or MOUZ — why not take them out in the first game and take it from there? In the end, I don't care if I'm second or I'm number eight in this Major, so why should it matter who we meet?"

You can read the interview or listen to the audio recording in full below:

You're through to the Royal Arena, some classic FaZe rounds in this game and in yesterday's game as well. Just tell me about qualifying after this kind of run that you've had that definitely got a little closer than you would have wanted, I'm sure.

I think everyone can see that our individual level hasn't been here, so I feel like in this group stage we perform as a team. We of course had a round here and there where people pop off, but we haven't had what I call life gamers, and you need those if you want to win a Major.

But managing to survive after such a rocky start — and obviously you can also feel the belief and confidence went really fast down after the Eternal Fire game —, so managing to step up like this today just showcased the mentality. Sometimes we may not believe in ourselves, but we believe in teammates and the team that can perform. It's not an easy game to play in 2-2, but we managed to, in my opinion, really dominate the game from start to finish, and I'm proud of the boys how we managed to close the group stage out. Now that's a chapter that's done, and now you're basically three games away from winning the first CS2 Major, and in Copenhagen of course. That's delicious.

Just talking about the game a bit, as you said you had the game against Eternal Fire that went quite rough, 1-13, but today on Overpass it was a much better showing. Talk me through recovering from that kind of blowout and what the conversation was like.

I think there are always different reasons why you're losing, especially when you lose 13-1. When we think about Overpass, we also got wrecked against Spirit [in Katowice]. We never really got a chance to execute on the map, so that was our main focus coming into this tournament. Now we had a chance to execute against Eternal Fire, but we didn't manage to do it correctly (chuckles), so now we talked about that.

I think today when we went into the clutches and into these 2-on-3s, we had good scenarios to close out the rounds. If you want to have a good T side on Overpass you need to win some of these 2-on-2s, 2-on-3s that look like a really bad scenario but you manage to close it out. Obviously, we did that better today, but I still think there's room for improvement and I think it really shakes off the Overpass feeling we had. So yeah, that was a good reset and it just showcased that we're progressing as a team during the tournament, and that's always nice to see.

There's always this thing with FaZe where these games get close, it's an ongoing running joke almost, but for it to be like this coming into the Major and for you guys not to close out games confidently but still closing out some of them, how does make you feel about the Major run so far and then going into the playoffs?

I think there's a huge difference between a group stage and a Major playoff. I think the pressure on a group stage is high, but the playoff and the energy you have in playoffs is a different show. I don't believe other teams are getting worse, I just think we have some players that really shine in those moments. If they're gonna do that next weekend, I have no idea, but obviously we have been shaky.

My confidence is that we could actually win with our B games in this tournament, meaning that if we hit our A game, we have done something correctly coming into the Major with the foundation and the basics of the team. But we need everyone to be on point if we want to win the Major, right? I think we're meeting a top seed in the beginning, and that might be Spirit or MOUZ, they've been on point, cruising through the group stage, and we have not. But you never know how things are gonna turn out because four or five days is a lot of time to prepare, rethink, regain confidence.

We have been pressured and we haven't cracked, and I think that's the most important thing that we can take with us, that we didn't crack under the pressure. That's what I'm gonna tell the guys and take with us to the playoffs, that it didn't matter we bended; we didn't crack.

rain said yesterday that he was feeling nerves, and he wasn't sure if the team was, but it felt like it when you were playing. Can you tell me from your perspective whether you felt the same and whether you think that will change in the playoffs?

I'm surprised that rain said that. Maybe it's true, I know for myself that I'm not nervous about the scenario. I'm calling, I'm trying to do everything I do normally, but what I can think and what maybe rain meant is that we're not taking the duels we usually do. Now, is that nerves, confidence, is it the pressure? There are a lot of things, maybe we haven't talked about it enough as a team, but knowing rain and him saying he feels a bit of nerves, that means something, right? I think you just have to acknowledge that, that the Majors are big tournaments, they're here two times a year, sometimes you have a bad period, sometimes a good period...

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rain: "I feel some nerves"

Maybe he was a little confused about the way we sometimes play the scenarios, and I think today you could see [the difference], and I just told the guys, 'just overpeek.' I think there hasn't been one situation this Major where I think we overpeeked, and I think FaZe is known to overpeek and overstep sometimes, and I think that's what we need to win the Major. We need to go out there, play our style, play our DNA, and be in the face of the opponent. I think we did that better today. We were not scared to take duels, to do moves, and that's where we play the best. It gives me a lot of options as a leader instead of playing basic, very slow CS. I think we had a good mixture with that. Hopefully the nerves, or whatever you want to say, are gone now.

Talking about the need to overpeek or have that confidence, in Katowice you had a really good run up until the final against Spirit. Going into the playoffs and the high potential of a rematch against Spirit, how are you feeling about that? [Editor's note: The interview was conducted before it was confirmed FaZe would play Spirit]

For me it doesn't matter who we meet. I think you obviously want to meet weaker teams on paper, but I've seen so many Majors where you get the easier bracket, and it turns out not as you think. If you want to win the Major we have to beat Spirit or MOUZ — why not take them out in the first game and take it from there? In the end, I don't care if I'm second or I'm number eight in this Major, so why should it matter who we meet?

Sometimes it can be better to meet the good teams early on, especially with some breaks, with so many days off. Obviously Spirit demolished us in Katowice, so we want to try to come for revenge. It's a different game, it's one month later, a lot of stuff happened. We're just trying to keep our final streak alive and it'd be amazing to reach the final here in Copenhagen as well.

It's a completely different Spirit roster, chopper and magixx are still there, but it's a little poetic when you think back to Antwerp with your match against them there...

Yeah, that Spirit game was one of the craziest Major semi-finals I played. I think I even knifed degster in the end on Dust2, we threw a 1-on-4, we went to overtime... It had everything, that game. So yeah, why not just romp it out again (laughs).

We'll see who we meet, in the end for me it doesn't matter, in the end there are easier and harder matchups and there are pluses and negatives about every scenario, but in the end it's all about us. If we want to win we have to play our best, and I think it doesn't matter who. Every single team in the playoffs, it's probably the best Major playoff I've seen so far with so many strong teams, and thanks to Buchholz and the seeding system that it actually worked out this time compared to other times.

Unlike apEX, you like that Buchholz guy...

(laughs) I like Buchholz because I think the main issue we had was because the [original] seeding was bad at the previous Majors, and now we had more even matchups in the first round. Even though there were huge upsets I still think the bracket played out as you actually want Buchholz to do. Sometimes he likes spicy matchups, but this time he agreed on something more straightforward.

And lastly, just talking about going into the Royal Arena, it's obviously your chance to play in front of a home crowd for a Major. Tell me about that feeling for you to walk onto that stage for a Major?

The first thing I did when I heard about the Major coming to Copenhagen was to understand it has to be treated as another Major, the same as I played before. It being in Copenhagen, we're not a full Danish team, but I'm obviously from Denmark, so I think until now I haven't really put much thought into it. It's more about that it's a Major.

Now, obviously the pressure and the energy and maybe I'm the only Dane to represent Denmark [Editor's note: The interview was conducted before G2 qualified] in the playoffs. I played a few finals in the Royal Arena, never won there, and I remember in BLAST Copenhagen last year I talked to my wife, and I said, 'I can't win in the Royal Arena,' and she said, 'There's gonna be a Major in Copenhagen for the third time.' So third time is maybe the lucky charm. Still, we are many games away from that. In the end, I'm happy to represent Denmark, a proud Dane in the arena, and I hope to just enjoy the show and make sure a lot of Danish fans are showing up and creating a huge energy.

Is this the time to break the curse?

I hope so. It's always different times, one was CS:GO, one was CS2, the last tournament with Twistzz, but now we're here four months later playing in Royal Arena again. Just looking forward to play and take a small day off today.