kassad: "nexa's stats in the last six months don't reflect his capabilities at all"

The BLEED coach believes that his new player can return to his old form in a different system and under less pressure.

BLEED enter the new tournament season with a fresh face after signing Nemanja "⁠nexa⁠" Isaković from G2 to replace Josef "⁠faveN⁠" Baumann in the latest of a series of shrewd transfer business conducted by head coach (and general manager) Aleksandar "⁠kassad⁠" Trifunović.

This will be the third time that the two Serbians will work together after previous spells on iNation and Renegades earlier in their careers.

As someone who knows nexa better than most, kassad didn't think twice about getting his compatriot on board despite his largely disappointing G2 spell. "It was an easy choice for me," he told HLTV, pointing to faveN's struggles in the anchor role when explaining the need for a change.

Read more

BLEED add nexa for faveN

BLEED have changed quite a bit since the Singaporean organization entered CS, at the start of this year, with Hampus "⁠hampus⁠" Poser and Cai "⁠CYPHER⁠" Watson being the only remaining players from the original lineup.

Before nexa was signed, kassad was able to pick up Joakim "⁠jkaem⁠" Myrbostad and Tim "⁠nawwk⁠" Jonasson, bolstering his squad with two experienced and more reliable players than Tsvetelin "⁠CeRq⁠" Dimitrov and Vladan "⁠VLDN⁠" Radević (the latter had been brought in as a replacement for Laurențiu "⁠lauNX⁠" Țârlea).

With all these changes, there's a new level of excitement surrounding BLEED ahead of the new season. kassad sets his sights on the Shanghai Major, but he doesn't want to get tunnel vision and forget about what else is out there. "Even though Shanghai is a big goal, it's not the biggest possible goal," he said, in a reference to the open circuit in 2025.

Speaking to HLTV days before nexa's unveiling, kassad discussed his thinking behind the latest change, the mistakes he has made since he took the project's reins, and his goals for the rest of the year and beyond.

---

You recently made two roster changes, bringing in jkaem and nawwk. So why did you decide to also get nexa now? Was replacing faveN something you had been considering, or was the opportunity to get nexa too good to pass up?

Well, there are several reasons, to be honest. First of all, we didn't really expect to make any changes. The plan was not to make any changes in this player break. But we realized that nexa had popped up on the market. hampus and I talked about it and realized we really needed an anchor instead of faveN. I have to say this publicly: faveN wasn't doing great in that role, not because he's a bad player; he's actually a really good player, really hard-working. It was very hard for me to make this decision because he was the one sacrificing the most on the team and I had to make this move for the bigger picture because this role wasn't meant for him at all. And I think he couldn't really handle it properly.

He's going to be good on any other team where he doesn't get this role, and he's going to be playing much better because he's a really good player. And it was a really tough decision for me to remove him. But nexa popped up on the market, like I said, and we had to discuss this option.

There were three options for the anchor spot. It was jks, nexa and bringing VLDN back from the bench. After negotiations and all those things that happened in the last few weeks, we chose nexa.

nexa comes from a rough spell with G2. He was very criticized from the moment he joined the team, a lot of people doubted that he was capable of replacing jks in that anchor role. When you spoke with him, what was his state of mind? Was he like, 'I'm determined to prove people wrong, I'm determined to prove that I'm still a tier-one player'? What was it like? What did he say to you?

He sounded fine. I think, at least from what I could understand, he was maybe a little bit relieved that this happened with G2. I don't know what happened behind the scenes with the team, but I know he wasn't the happiest there. The thing with nexa is that his stats in the last six months don't really reflect his capabilities at all. If he is put in a different type of environment, in different situations, and if he is given a little bit more freedom, I think he can go back to his normal level, which is much higher than what he was showing in the last six, seven months with G2.

He sounded okay. He wants to get back to the grind, and it was enough for me when I spoke to him. I have known him personally for a long time, and I know exactly what he can and cannot do. So in that sense, it was an easy choice for me.

And do you think that the fact he won't have as much pressure as he used to will help him get back to his old level?

Absolutely. One hundred percent. Like I said, he will get a little bit more freedom here, and the environment is different. Not to say anything bad about G2, I don't want people to misunderstand that. I'm just saying that the system and the whole thing will be a little different. Obviously, there will be a little less pressure than when you're in G2, where everyone expects you to win all the trophies. They've had that ever since NiKo joined. And it's not only on NiKo, it's on HooXi, it's on nexa, it's on everyone there. The last six months were rough for G2 and nexa. I think you are right when you say there won't be as much pressure as there was on G2, and that will help him go back to his normal form.

I wanted to ask about nexa's role in the team. Is he going to help hampus in terms of leadership? Will he be like a secondary voice on the team, or is someone else doing that already?

What I've told him is that he has the freedom and he can be as vocal as he wants. I'm not going to put pressure on him to do secondary calling or anything. I want him to focus on himself, to bring his form up, and just focus on his role and his play. We have a whole system where hampus and I are developing everything strategically. At least next season, he needs to completely focus on himself and on how can be the best version of the player that he is. And he's going to get all the help he needs for that, starting with the bootcamp on the 8th of July.

faveN showed a lot of promise earlier in his career, but he seems to have fallen off a bit. Why do you think things didn't work out between him and the team?

This is very important for people to know. Josef is a very, very good player. He was put into these different positions from the very start and it kind of sucked for him because we couldn't really move him into better positions and roles and give him more responsibility because we had more aggressive players. So he needed to take a step back.

The last month, month and a half, ever since we brought in jkaem and nawwk, was not a true representation of his capabilities. I think he can be an asset to any international team or even a German team, if he wants to go down that route. For him, it just sucked that he had to sacrifice a lot for the team, which was kind of reflected in his stats, and people are going to look at that.

But the real picture is that he is a super good team player. He never complains about anything. He took on all of the roles that we gave him. And the sacrifices that he had to make, he made them without any hesitation, and it took a toll on him. Sadly and unfortunately, the anchor position is the one that doesn't fit him, and that was the position that we really needed. So that's why the change happened.

You've made some changes to the roster since you put the team together, and I guess it's undeniable that you've made some very smart decisions. You refused to overpay for players; for example with jkaem and nawwk, you waited until Apeks was in crisis to get them. Now you're getting nexa, who was on the bench and, I would assume, was fairly cheap as well. Are you happy with the team as it is right now? And if you had to give me a percentage, how much better is this team now compared to the initial roster?

I would say it's twice as good as it was six months ago, in terms of the lineup, the structure and everything going on inside the team. I think it's much, much better than what we had six months ago, because BLEED had never been in CS. So there was nothing going on, we had to build it from scratch. The same goes with, as you mentioned, the player transfers. I didn't want to follow the market, where everything was overinflated and people were paying ridiculous amounts of money for players that didn't have that value in the market at all.

So I just waited and waited. However, it doesn't mean that I was sure I was going to make changes or that I was going to bring this or that player. Every player that was on this team at the beginning had a fair chance in every possible way and had all the help they needed. If you don't make it, well, this is a performance-based industry, and sometimes changes need to happen. And they did on our team. Now, I think we have a pretty stable roster, with roles pretty much on the spot.

The only little bit of clash we have is between jkaem and CYPHER because they're both super aggressive. So we've had to swap some of the positions there to make it work for everyone. And I have to mention that hampus took a bit of a step back on some maps to give more freedom to jkaem and CYPHER. He was very happy to do it. We are still in the process of figuring out small details, but we are close to getting to the place where we need to be. Like I said, we will have a bootcamp soon, where we're going to polish these things and then we're going to start a new season.

How long is that bootcamp going to be?

This bootcamp will last two weeks, from the 8th to the 22nd of July. We opted not to go for a classic bootcamp, like at Relog, which has been really good to us, and decided to go in a different direction for this one. Hampus has a big summer house on the lake and we're going to do the bootcamp there for the whole CS division with eight people, the players, me, my assistant coach and the manager. We're going to have the PCs delivered and everything set up there for this one.

We're going to work on some team building, and we're obviously going to practice and isolate ourselves completely from the outside world. We're just going to play and stay together for the next two weeks. It was hampus' idea, and I supported it. We're going to see how it goes. That's the plan for the first bootcamp of the season, to try to prepare for the closed qualifier for the RMR, especially because we have three new players, basically. So this bootcamp and team building will come along really nicely.

Considering how fresh the roster was when you were in Mongolia, were you happy that the team reached the final and took a map off of TheMongolZ?

I'm happy with what we did in one month, but I think we could have done way more. But I'm not dissatisfied. We had like six or seven days of practice before Mongolia. Literal practice. All the other days were only games and games and games. Games are always good. You can build a lot of things by playing online games. But sometimes you need a little bit more practice to kind of polish some things, to avoid simple mistakes that usually don't happen to better teams. And we didn't have time for that. That's why we made some silly mistakes in some games.

But overall, I'm happy with how the team performed, especially with nawwk. He is one of the best AWPers I have had in my career, so I'm happy we got him. It was based on hampus' recommendation. He and I decide pretty much what needs to happen, which players we should get and how we should approach these things. He told me we needed to get Tim, and I told him about jkaem, and we made a deal and we brought the two of them. I'm super, super happy with how Tim performed because I didn't really know what to expect. I knew how good jkaem could be because we worked together for years, but I didn't know how good Tim was. And I was extremely surprised. I think he's maybe one of the ten best AWPers in CS right now.

It has now been eight months since you joined BLEED. How do you look back at the journey so far? And what goals have you set out for the rest of the year? Is reaching the Major a must for the team?

The first month, after I signed, there was a lot of scrambling, a lot of problems, because the organization didn't have a CS division. So everything needed to be done in a very specific way, in a very fast manner, and obviously, there are going to be some mistakes if you do something fast. There were some mistakes at the beginning and some things could have been done better, but we're not going to cry about it too much. We know that those mistakes were part of the process and I was pretty sure that the first lineup we got was not going to be the final lineup. Because of the market, the fact that you started with zero points and you have to battle through online qualifiers, and also the fact that you have players you have never played with each other before. So we had five people who had never really spoken to each other, had never played with each other in official games. Maybe sometimes against each other, but that's it. And it can be really hard when you have five different personalities and you need to fit it all together.

As for the second season, the goal is to qualify for the Shanghai Major: to get through the closed qualifier into the RMR and try to get our asses to Shanghai. And then I feel that 2025 will be a very big year for Counter-Strike because the partner leagues will be gone and everything will rely on Valve's ranking. All the invites and the qualifiers and everything. So we need to think about that.

Yes, the Shanghai Major is pretty big and everything, but we need to think beyond that as well because CS is not going anywhere in the next ten years and they made this drastic change and we need to adapt to it and see how we're going to get our team into these events, like Cologne, Katowice, BLAST… I hear that StarLadder is maybe coming back. The calendar is going to be packed, so you need to think about that, too. So even though Shanghai is a big goal, it's not the biggest possible goal.