Snappi on having no star player: "There's a world where we can do it by committee"

The Dane says Falcons are finally heading in the right direction after the addition of dupreeh.

In their first tournament appearance since March, Falcons are set to compete at ESL Pro League S19. The event will serve as Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen's LAN debut for the Saudi organization, following his prior involvement with the team during their recent unsuccessful Esports World Cup open qualifier campaign.

Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer and his team enter the Maltese event following a tumultuous 2024, marred by their failure to secure a Major appearance, which led to Mohammad "⁠BOROS⁠" Malhas being replaced on the roster. Additionally, the team received criticism from the community for their handling of the Jordanian player, shown in a behind-the-scenes vlog shot during the RMR.

After the dust had settled somewhat, Snappi talked to HLTV about Falcons' expectations for EPL, dupreeh's integration into the team, and the controversial RMR vlog outtake.

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Recently everyone was discussing the clip between BOROS and zonic. Do you think that was blown out of proportion? Or is that something that's normal, those honest conversations?

I think there's a lot of context missing. First of all I think this capture that we were doing, the unedited footage was like 24 minutes, where there's also a big discussion between me and maden and other stuff that would have looked weird if shown to the public. Overall it's impossible for the viewer, because there is so much stuff that isn’t shown that no matter if people think left or right, it's biased by the 2% that the documentary chose to show.

For example, during Katowice in the first match against Eternal Fire, BOROS changed mouse prior to the match and posted a 0.63 rating, his worst match I think. He changed to a [Logitech] Superlight. After that me and him kinda agreed that it's better to go back to the old mouse until he gets home and can practice with the new one, I can't remember exactly which one he was using as his main, and then he obviously started playing much better during Katowice.

Then, prior to the RMR which we flew directly to, he changed again to a Zowie U2 before the opening match. I asked him, 'Mate, is this a good idea?' and he assured me it was, so I was like, 'Alright, fine, just play with it.'

But then during the match he was whining on TeamSpeak like, 'fuck this shit mouse, I can't hit with this shit,' and obviously that annoys people in the middle of the match. I think that had he never whined during the match on TeamSpeak, it would never really been brought up as an issue. All this is context nobody knows when they see the clip.

In regards to the whole BOROS thing and all of these clips and opinions left and right, the mouse is 2% of the whole story, and obviously that's something that needs to be understood. I do obviously agree with the public, it shouldn't have been published also, because I think the viewers should have been entitled to make their own opinion on what happened through the 2% shown in the documentary without this, instead of a narrative being pushed. Now the narrative is that BOROS was kicked because he changed his mouse, but that is obviously not the case.

I do think for some of the players the way that it has been, the way we have been judged on it, that has been a little bit unfair to some extent, because there is so much context left out. We could obviously have gone out and defended ourselves, but at the time we chose not to because it would just bring potentially more damage to the situation where we just wanted to work. Now we got dupreeh, we just want to work and move forward, so that's what we've been focusing on.

Talking about dupreeh, what's the integration of him into the team been like so far?

The integration has been really good, I think he's a super-skilled player that is going to function well in our system. I think in Vitality he played a lot of tough roles and he played a lot of the roles I play, like on B Mirage, and running in first on the T side, where you kind of just have to run in and die. In our team now he is getting more of his old roles back and also he's shown very good skill in CS2, and I think he just brings a good mood and good vibes. I think he's a really good fit for us, so I look forward to seeing where we can take it.

In a podcast you did with natu, just after s1mple was announced to be standing in, you mentioned that Falcons needed a star player. Is dupreeh going to offer that for you?

This is one of the things that might in the long term be an issue, who is going to be the star player in our team, but maybe there's a world where we can also do it by a committee.

We haven't seen it in officials because I've been very poor individually, because of all the stress around first the transfer to Falcons and then after that the whole roster situation where nothing was working in-game for us, but now I had time to focus on my individual level and I think I can bring a lot more to the table like I did in the past in ENCE.

I also believe everyone else looks a lot better and more comfortable in-game now and I think there's a world where we can do it by committee. I think dupreeh has also shown to actually be putting up really solid numbers in CS2, and we're gonna give him the chance to do that here also.

You can see in a team like FaZe, yes they have maybe bigger star players some would say than us, but they do not have a m0NESY or a donk or a ZywOo, but they're still doing really good. So there's a world where we can make this work and that is obviously what we're going to try to do, we are going to going to try to succeed with this. As everyone knows if you're an org that invests a lot, eventually if things don't work, there will always be changes.

Was it tough to find options just because of the timing of when you were looking for a fifth player?

Yeah, I think in general the best time to make changes is in the summer and winter. However, we were really satisfied with dupreeh. I would say that he is really what we needed, he is a steady hand and a stable person, has underrated skill I would say, and we needed stability more than anything. This is something that dupreeh brings.

Your first officials with dupreeh were the Esports World Cup open qualifier. Obviously, it didn't go as planned as you didn't get through, but what were the matches like for you? What did you see from the team?

Obviously it's a failure to not qualify, but I don't we think played terrible CS. I think we lost 13-11 to RUBY, who later also beat Aurora who won this online tournament a few days ago, so they can obviously play CS. We made a lot of small mistakes, but the fundamentals and the way we played Counter-Strike was good, I would say we just lost too many good situations.

But it's BO1 online, it can happen, we didn't put too much into it because we feel like our practice has been going really well. Coming into EPL our confidence has not been shaken by one close best-of-one loss, because with MR12 and losing both pistols, things go quickly.

I will say that, as you could see, every single favorite went out. Eternal Fire, Cloud9, HEROIC, us, ENCE, Apeks, BIG, whatever. It's online BO1 CS, you're asking for upsets.

Yeah, it does make sense. So what do you make of your group at Pro League? Have you taken much of a look at the teams, and what are your thoughts on your group?

I think our group is pretty top-heavy, I think there are a few groups that are weaker maybe, but I think Group A is the strongest from what I remember. So yeah, we have some really strong top teams there, so you need to really fight well if you want to beat them. But I do feel that we have a good chance in the group to qualify for playoffs and it's definitely something that we need to do, it would be a huge disappointment if we don't reach playoffs.

So if the goals are playoffs for ESL Pro League, when do you think this roster should hit its full potential and be looking to go deep in tournaments? Have you set a timeline like that?

For us, we haven't really set a timeline yet. Mainly because this is the first tournament with dupreeh, and with this roster now, it's the first time we've been able to work properly and add strats, not repeating stuff over and over and over. We can actually work on our playbook and develop, see what works and what doesn't work, so it's been a nice process the last month just practicing and working with dupreeh. I think we're moving in the right direction finally.