Staehr: "If we raise our lowest level, we can become contenders for almost every tournament"

Staehr is upbeat about Astralis' trajectory despite ending the season with an early playoffs exit at BLAST Premier Spring Final.

Astralis endured a tumultuous start to their 2024 season, as the signings of HEROIC riflers Martin "⁠stavn⁠" Lund and Jakob "⁠jabbi⁠" Nygaard failed to net the results that the team anticipated. After failing to qualify for PGL Major Copenhagen, Astralis opted for more changes, bringing on Alexander "⁠br0⁠" Bro in place of Benjamin "⁠blameF⁠" Bremer.

Since the addition of br0, Astralis have markedly improved from their lackluster start to the year, securing four consecutive semi-final appearances. The team has still endured hiccups, faltering to Liquid and The MongolZ in close games where the Danes were the favorites heading into the series.

A quarter-final exit at the BLAST Premier Spring Final marks an end to both FaZe's semi-final streak and the first half of their 2024 season, as Nicolai "⁠device⁠" Reedtz's men found themselves unable to contend with Virtus.pro's difficult playstyle.

Shortly after his team's exit from the Spring Finals, Victor "⁠Staehr⁠" Staehr spoke with HLTV regarding the loss to Virtus.pro, his view on the team's unfortunate start to the year, and the aims for the team looking past the player break.

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A tough way to end the season. What do you think went wrong for you in that series?

On Inferno we had good situations on our T side a lot of the time, we had a lot more rounds we could win and should win, but we just don't shoot good enough [laughs]. We also had two or three rounds where we were 5v4 and we had a call we wanted to do, but somehow we lose a kill and we're 4v4 and that destroys the plan of the round, which was a little unfortunate. They just played better, they got the kills at the right times.

It was the same on Dust2. They just abused playing a slow game against us and we were not too comfortable against that, they really abused it on their T side. They played really well, just better than us to be honest.

Like you say, you had some situations, a 5v4 where a kill goes against you. It looked like maybe you were getting a little stressed out in the mid-rounds, was that happening to the team?

Yeah for sure… well, not even stressed out, just not communicating well enough to get the right spacing and be able to trade each other. That's really important when you are 5v4, if you trade every time, you win, that's how it works right? So yeah, stressed out or bad communication, whatever, with a little more initiative it would have been easier to play.

Do you think also Virtus.pro's playstyle, like you said it's slow, was that tough for you to deal with?

On Inferno I wouldn't say so, that was just us playing badly, but on Dust2, for sure. I think they played better than us, I can't say anything about that. It got closer than Inferno, but I think they just played better, nothing much to say.

Just to talk about Astralis overall: at the start of this lineup it went really well, people were excited to see you guys and how you were performing. It dropped off, not a lot, but a little bit towards the end of the season. Did you feel that in the team, and what caused it do you think?

We dropped off a little bit, we lost some matches and that should happen at some point, right? I think we still played pretty good in the matches we lost, maybe not the Liquid match, but the other matches we played decent. The Mongolz played really well when we lost to them, we just did some individual mistakes. If we fix those mistakes I think we can get back to the level we were at the start.

When we were at Chengdu, beating FaZe and playing well, it was like just playing insane individually and not making too many mistakes. If you make mistakes against good teams you will get abused and you will get owned.

Was there any sense of tiredness? It's been a long season and you had a lot of work to do bringing in new players.

I think we always do, but that's not an excuse. Every team has the same season, well kinda, some teams don't play all the tournaments, but a lot of teams have the same season. It's not an excuse for why we dropped at the end, but of course you feel tiredness and need a vacation at some point. So yeah, we could feel it, but everyone can, every single team, so it's not an excuse.

Now there's a bit of a break before the next season, where do you think Astralis can go in the next season? What heights can you hit?

We have proven with the way we have played that we can for sure be a top team and win tournaments, it's just about getting consistent and playing our best game. When we have our lowest level or our mediocre level, then it's just not good enough against the top teams, and that's what we get abused on. I think if we get practice in, we are bootcamping straight after the player break, and we raise our lowest level, then I think we can become contenders for almost every tournament.