sAw: "Having that fear factor of the AWP will help all of our rifles"

The Finnish coach believes degster's signing is worth the risk.

HEROIC came into the new year with a completely revamped roster under the leadership of Eetu "⁠sAw⁠" Saha. Despite being short of preparation time, the team qualified for the Copenhagen Major and reached the top 10 in the world rankings, but the results dried up after a couple of months together.

The lack of success forced the team into replacing Nico "⁠nicoodoz⁠" Tamjidi with Abdul "⁠degster⁠" Gasanov, and the Russian rifler had a fantastic debut against MIBR after not playing an official for over a year.

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degster top frags in HEROIC debut vs MIBR

After the win against the Brazilians, sAw joined HLTV for a chat about HEROIC's new addition, their decision to pick Dust2, and the expectations for BetBoom Dacha Belgrade.

If you can't see the embed above, listen to the audio interview here.

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You won on your debut with degster. It wasn't the most comfortable game, but a win is a win, right?

A win is a win, for sure. Two of the maps were pretty comfortable, and then on Dust2, we made some mistakes on the CT side that caused us to lose. It's been a while since anyone played officials on Dust2, so I expect it to be a bit shaky at the start, but there will be a lot of things we can look at to fix some stuff for the future. Overall, a good win and a good step in the right direction.

We only saw underdogs pick Dust2 so far in Belgrade, but you were the first favorite to do so. Is that because you feel comfortable on the map, or are you just trying to get the reps in for the future?

It's both. We practiced a bit on Dust2, not a lot with Abdul [degster] obviously, but we got some reps in, and then we wanted to see how it works in officials. I feel like we have multiple players who are comfortable on the map, the roles fit them, so I think it will be a good map for us in the future. But right now, it's a bit of a testing period.

degster had a great game today. How has he been settling into the team?

So far, it's been only positive with degster, to be honest. He is really direct with the things he sees in the game and what he wants, but it's also early days, and we are still adapting him to the team. He is finding his place, he will have a lot of space and room to work as the AWPer, which is really key for this team. I think it will help all our rifles as well, to have that fear factor of the AWP.

He didn't play an official for a long time. Did you see any rustiness from him, not necessarily just in terms of aim, but in terms of the meta and all the things he needs to do during the game?

He needs to adapt to CS2 for sure. He has done a lot of adaptation [on his own], he has played the game a lot already, but then it's about the meta more. How other teams are playing, how he can adjust himself. But he had a good first match with us, so that's a positive sign, but there are details he needs to learn 100%, which will come with time. Then it's also about adapting to the team and our structure, system, and playstyle, but so far so good. It's been a positive start with him, it's been good overall.

There's a lot of AWPing talent in the scene right now. Why did you choose degster?

What we get with degster is someone who already has plenty of LAN experience from the past, someone who has been showing his skill in important pressure matches, and we get an AWPer who can play both aggressively and passively.

Of course, there were risks involved, like the fact that he has been on the bench for one year, and the rumors about his attitude, but those are things I think we can handle and communicate about, find solutions, and work on them. It is a risky move, in a way, but then the upside is so big, so why shouldn't we get him? I think he is such a talented player, so it was a good choice for us.

More on a general note, you've been in HEROIC for five months now. How do you look back at the entire period of making a new team from scratch, qualifying for the Major, and now enacting your first roster change?

When I joined Heroic, it was obviously a full rebuild of players from different teams. We had TeSeS and sjuush from the old HEROIC, which was our core, so to say. Everyone else came from different teams. Sure, me and NertZ came from ENCE, but that's about it. It was a lot of different philosophies and ideas we needed to bring together to try to find the balance and common ground.

It was a lot of work from the start and it will remain that way because we are in the early days of this team. But for this journey so far, we have made a good start for a team that did a full rebuild. We qualified for some important tournaments and made a good rise in the rankings. Sure, there was a bit of sloppiness towards the end with nicoodoz, when the results weren't what we wanted them to be.

It also has to be said that the expectations were rising within the team, which is normal. Then we didn't meet them, and our honeymoon ended because of that. But overall, I think we got the tournaments in, we did a good rebuild of the team so far. The rest of the season is more about getting degster into the team, which will hopefully show in the next season.

You say like the previous team you needed to rebuild from scratch, now you just changed one player. I know NertZ said in the pre-match interview that he expects this team to be top three in the world. What do you think this team can achieve?

We can be top three in the world, I think it's realistic. It's more about how much time would it take, how much patience all the players, the organization, and I have, and how much are we able to agree on things and find that common ground.

It will be a mix of having the honeymoon and what kind of results are you getting at the start, middle, and then later on in the team, and how that will affect the player relationships. Right now, we are working on the base, to bring this culture we have already started. We want to bring that to degster and work on it for the future, and then the results will come.

You've just won your first game here. I know it's very early days for this team, but what is a result you would be happy with here in Belgrade?

Minimum making it out of the group and making playoffs, but even that I think is not that tough after looking at our group, so it might be just even making the grand final in a result way. But the result is not the goal right now, it's more about looking at the process.

What I will be happy with is if we can show good results, show that we are working as a team, and show we can fix the mistakes we find here in this tournament. It's about the process at the start, and then we start running towards the long-term goals, that's what is important for me right now.