HooXi: "The post-Major blues are hitting us a bit"

HooXi does not feel G2 are playing their best CS at IEM Chengdu.

G2 and specifically Rasmus "⁠HooXi⁠" Nielsen came under fire recently despite making a run to the semi-finals of PGL Major Copenhagen, after many in the community criticised the team's decision to allow Ancient through the veto rather than Inferno in their matchup with Natus Vincere.

The team's start at IEM Chengdu did little to quell the disquiet surrounding G2, as they labored to a victory over 9z before being comfortably dispatched by Liquid. The European combine did, however, improve for their elimination series against Lynn Vision, particularly the recently-maligned Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač and Nemanja "⁠huNter-⁠" Kovač.

Following G2's tournament-saving 2-0 win over Lynn Vision, HooXi took some time out with HLTV to talk about his team's performances in Chengdu thus far, their run at PGL Major Copenhagen, and address the criticisms levelled at the team in recent weeks.

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A 2-0 victory to stay alive in the tournament. What are your thoughts on this match, especially this Inferno game, which was quite chaotic towards the end?

Right now, we are fighting to get the wins. We are not playing good CS. I think it's showing that all the teams who made the playoffs at the Major, like FaZe as well, are very exhausted right now. It's hard to keep the same level. We just have to fight through, and, hopefully, we will get the last win before the playoffs.

Did you have any practice at all between the Major and coming here?

We spent half a day reviewing games and one day practicing. It's not a lot compared to one month before the Major.

How important was it in this Inferno game to see, for example, NiKo popping off and huNter- also having good moments? These are two very important players whose form has been fluctuating a little bit, especially in CS2. How important was it to see those guys having good frags and good rounds?

It's always important for all of my players to have confidence, so to see them have a good performance is always nice. We still have a long way to go before we are at our top level. I think we were close to it at the Major and now, obviously, we are falling down a bit. The kind of post-Major blues are hitting us a bit. I hope we can kind of rise up through the tournament.

After the loss to NAVI, you said that 'we have to stop fighting ourselves.' What did you mean exactly by that?

We were talking about previous rounds, we were talking about mistakes like it's a practice game and we were not working together as a team in that specific moment. It's honestly something we have improved a lot, but I think the pressure got to us and that's why it happened. I think in this tournament we have been way better at it, and hopefully, we will never lose to ourselves in that way again.

Seeing NAVI win the tournament, did it make it less painful because you lost to the champions or even more painful because you know just how close you came to beating them?

I think neither. We have a thing of always losing to the winner, so it's not something new. And I don't really think too much about it. You cannot just say, 'If we defeated NAVI, we would have won the tournament,' you know? Because it would have been a completely different game for us against FaZe. What's most annoying is losing to NAVI for like the sixth time or something [laughs]. That was what hurt the most, I think.

After the match, a lot of stock was put on the veto, even though there were mistakes in-game, like the ones on Anubis that cost you the map. Do you think that the criticism that you got was a little bit unfair, because everyone seemed so focused on that one particular aspect?

I think that people always want to find a reason for how we lose and find someone to blame. That's just natural in this scene. Like you saw against Liquid yesterday, we went for Inferno and lost anyway. And I also saw NAVI the day after our match completely destroy FaZe on Inferno. The veto was all good and it was a team decision. It's not only me or TaZ or something like that. Who knows? Maybe we would have won Inferno, but that was not the reason we lost.

You are now going to face the winner of the match between Heroic and FURIA, they're still playing. Considering that you're not at your best because you just came off the Major and you're feeling a bit exhausted, would you say that making the playoffs is the minimum?

Oh, I think that making the playoffs is always the minimum, no matter what state we're in. As long as we're G2, I think we should always make the playoffs. And we will still go for the win. On this team, we can change from one day to the next. We can be firing on all cylinders all of a sudden, and we just have to catch some momentum. Maybe the confidence that some of the guys got from the individual performances today will help with that.

There has been a lot of criticism about the fact that G2 sometimes is a one-man show, that if m0NESY isn't playing super well, no one is picking up the slack. What can the team do to make sure that m0NESY gets a little bit more help from the other players?

We can just step up our game. And it's not really a problem to have a star player. I think a lot of the top teams… For example, Vitality had a long period of time when they were the best and ZywOo was doing basically what Ilya is doing now. I don't think that it's necessarily a problem that we need him to perform because he's performing every game and it's really good. I think that a lot of the time we can win without having other people picking up the slack. We just have to be careful, execute our game plan well and play our B game well, like communication, helping each other out and going in for the team. Stuff like this. Then we are fine.