karrigan: "We had a two-hour team talk for the first time in two years"

The Danish captain reflected on the first half of the 2024 season for FaZe.

Entering IEM Dallas off the back of a quarterfinal departure from ESL Pro League Season 19, FaZe looked to rekindle their streak of grand finals appearances in the Texas event.

Unfortunately for the European side, this was not how things ultimately panned out. FaZe bowed out of the event after facing a shocking defeat in the quarterfinals to a G2 lineup featuring crowd-favorite Jake "⁠Stewie2K⁠" Yip.

Date	Matches
IEM Dallas 2024
31/05/2024	FaZe Finished 0:2 G2	Match

Following the team's exit at the hands of G2, FaZe in-game leader Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen spoke with HLTV regarding the team's disappointing finish in IEM Dallas, the internal struggles the squad is facing, and his thoughts on the team's past results and future outings.

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First I just want to talk about the game versus G2. The result really wasn't what most anticipated, and the manner in which you lost those two maps took a lot of people by surprise. What do you think went wrong in that matchup?

First of all, I think G2 played a great game, in some way the perfect storm. I think we had, not some underlying issues, but we haven't really had the time to sit down and talk about rough losses. When we lose some of the games in other tournaments, you put it down to small details, but I think the energy and the passion we showed in the G2 game was non-existent.

When we had these areas of low energy, it has been in games that didn't eliminate us. So it's always, as long as we can turn up the heat when it matters the most, that's what we're known for, that's where we are the hardest team to beat.

We just had a two-hour-long team talk for the first time in two years, where we just sit and talked about feelings. No hard feelings to each other, but just how everyone feels right now, if it's burnout, the way we played, spots on some maps, whatever we feel we can work on for next season.

Sooner or later we had to have that really bad loss like this to be able to keep grinding and keep improving. Eventually, it would have happened, and after this talk, I was like, rather it would happen here than in Cologne.

You spoke after Chengdu about being really drained for the first time in your career. It makes you wonder because you guys get these consistent deep runs, does that make it harder to take the step back to re-evaluate?

I think we always take a step back and evaluate small details of the game, how does everyone feel, but we are not a team that is very good at speaking about emotions. Often we put it down to small things that's easy to fix on the run in the tournament. But, obviously, some of the results that we've had in the past two or three months, it was easy to put down to some fatigue, because there was fatigue, from myself, how much energy I can put in.

Coming to Pro League and this tournament, yeah there was the travel, the default things, but we were not burned out, per se. But it's like, new map, Dust2 and Vertigo coming in, we're trying to put as much effort into fixing the map pool on the run. I think most of all we just didn't show up, and that's just not good enough. That's why we had a good talk about how we can improve for next season, because the season is coming to an end.

We have a BLAST, we give everything we can, but we also need to be putting everything in perspective. We had a really, in some way good season; not so many trophies, but so many deep runs that we showed that we are maybe the most consistent team in the season.

Is that a result you're pleased with? You've had some solid results, but just one trophy. Are you content with how the first half of the season ended?

In some ways yes, in some ways no. I think winning Katowice or the Major would have made this season like, okay we're the best team in the world. We are consistently a team that's been hard to beat besides this game against G2. If you want to win a tournament, you have to beat us, it was as simple as that.

I think it just comes to show that the competition is high. I think we have so much power in our individual players; some players are not feeling the best right now in the game and that shows in a team with so many good players. We need to make sure we have a consistent flow individually, if you want to create an era of winning the big tournaments when it mattered the most.

You touched on it briefly, but how much time have you had to work on Dust2 and the new Vertigo? Did you guys have really any opportunities to work on these ahead of the event?

Yeah, we put some effort into Dust2. Vertigo came the day before we traveled to the US, so it was only theory-crafting. But also we have tried to improve our Ancient and Anubis for the past month. Now, we lost on Nuke, five out of six Nukes, which has been our key pillar map to win tournaments. It just showcased that the effort that we put into improving our worst maps took a hit in some of our top maps.

That's a balance you always do, I just didn't expect Nuke to fall off this much within a short time period. That's why we have had these results right now, we haven't been able to rely on our Nuke pick.

Do you think that's one of the critical factors for that Spirit loss?

I think the Spirit loss, there were different options to pick. In some way, I wanted to try and pick Dust2, because I knew Dust2 could be played in the playoff against us. By testing the waters on Dust2, we would be able to play the map without pressure. But the second G2 picked it, we played the map for the first time in an official with high pressure.

It's a perfect storm how the veto started, them picking Dust2, a map we haven't played. We know we can play the map, of course, but in the end there are other factors than just playing the map. If you play the map without having the consequence of you going out, it's easier to play the map.

You also touched on having the BLAST Spring Final after this. You had that two-hour team talk, but how much can you really integrate before heading there?

I think everything on the team is baby steps, you take it step by step. I think first of all the most important thing is enjoying playing with each other, and enjoying practice, and enjoying the tournament. Sometimes down the line when you're not winning tournaments, and you go out as the last team almost winning, you forgot to enjoy the moment that you're in. I think that's something we lost a little bit down the line.

I think everyone who knows FaZe from our vlogs on YouTube, it gets a bit crazy in the practice room. I think we lost a little bit of that touch there of the team chemistry, because of all the travelling, and people are getting burned out personally. In the end, I think it's something we mentioned that, when we go to London, enjoy the game, play the basics, play simple, and just play a little bit freely and then just not always thinking about results, results, results. At some point, when you always think about that, you start forgetting about why you're playing video games, and why we're all doing what we love.

I have one last question, pretty big picture. With 2025 comes the end of franchise leagues and the reintroduction of other tournament organizers, giving teams some choice in what to play. Do you think that might help to alleviate some of the issues you raised?

I think it's yes and no. If you go to a tournament, when we're FaZe we have to expect that we go to the final. But if you don't, we have a lot more days off to recover, go home, and chill a bit.

When it comes to 2025, I think some of the pros are that we get a lot of new teams having a chance to play events with some top-tier teams. In some way, the problem that I see with it is that because of the way the Major is structured now, with full invites, it means that the teams that grind the most and sacrifice the most mental-health-wise are the ones that will get invited directly to the Legends Stage. That's a concern I have in that sense, that it's gonna be based on who is able to play every single week and travel from tournament to tournament that will benefit from it.

What I miss the most is the tournaments like Cologne and Katowice where all the top dogs will be in the same tournament. But I think there's going to be a lot of splits, and teams are gonna choose, asking each other what team is not going to that tournament, okay we'll go to that to take the first place and have a good high ranking.

I see a lot of question marks, but I think it's also needed. Let's see how the wild west goes in 2025, but I think it's going to be rough for finding the balance between how much you push forward and how much you push back.