Swani interview: G2 almost kicked HooXi before Cologne 2023, anti-strat examples, coaching G2

The German tactician sat down with HLTV for a lengthy chat about his career in the game.

Jan "⁠Swani⁠" Müller is a man with an unorthodox career in Counter-Strike. The German tactician had no playing experience in the game and got his first analyst gig in ALTERNATE aTTaX back in 2016, before quickly rising to notoriety in the years that followed with notable stints in Liquid and SK and eventually settling at G2 in 2019.

It was in the German organization that Swani would get his chance to lead a tier-one squad as a coach and the 29-year-old did so with aplomb, winning BLAST World Final, IEM Katowice, and IEM Cologne. But despite all the success, he ended his year-long stint behind the team due to the job taking a "big toll" on him at the end of 2023, and he announced his retirement from Counter-Strike shortly after in April 2024.

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Swani retires from Counter-Strike: "I have gradually lost passion for [the game]"

Following his decision to end his career in the game, Swani sat down with HLTV for a lengthy chat about his decision and a behind-the-scenes look at his atypical rise to prominence.

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Editor's note: This interview was conducted on April 22, before ESL Pro League Season 19.

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Swani began by reminiscing about his start in Counter-Strike with 99Damage, a German broadcasting company and former news website. That helped him meet Christian "⁠crisby⁠" Schmitt, who asked him to help at ALTERNATE aTTaX sometime around ESWC 2016. "I just said, 'Yeah, of course, why not?' I had no clue, it was never my intention to become an analyst or a coach. I just said, 'Fuck it, let's go,'" recalls Swani.

"There would have been 20 better candidates than me, but we were good friends. We always talked about the game a lot, and I think he saw that I might have a good eye for the game, and he just gave me a shot."

With no professional experience in Counter-Strike, Swani says he is very thankful to the German organization that gave him his first analyst job. "I didn't have any background playing professionally, so I had to learn from scratch. I was just there to create videos, to create Google Docs — I was literally spamming Google Docs. I obviously did way too much. I almost always wrote a book for them, which they obviously can't read and remember it all, but it was learning by doing.

"I'm also really thankful that the players and everyone had patience, and that they gave a shot to a new guy because aTTaX was always very ambitious, especially in the German scene. I'm very thankful for what they did for me," Swani says.

That eventually led to Swani joining Liquid, which came about after the German responded to a Twitter post from the organization that stated they were looking for an analyst. He worked from home and was studying concurrently to have a backup plan, which means he didn't have much contact with the players.

"I only know from sitting in on scrims they were pretty good at listening to my feedback. They weren't arrogant, like I experienced from some players, because if you come in as a fresh guy with no experience and talk to experienced players like EliGE or something, it would be understandable if they wouldn't have time for you. But they were honestly pretty great to work with, and I learned a lot, especially from nitr0 as an IGL and the way he sees the game."

After his Liquid stint, he joined SK in 2017 in what proved to be another challenge for him to overcome. "It was pretty weird because when I joined them, some players didn't even watch demos, they were just playing. But they were so good at playing that it didn't matter.

"But back then, people were starting to figure them out, and I think that's when they wanted some external help because it was going downhill a bit. Once you're the No. 1 team, you have a red dot on your back, and everyone wants to know what you're doing and how to beat you, so it's really hard to maintain a top spot nowadays.

"They were just asking me to help individuals, that was my only work. fer was asking me, 'How can I play Toilets better? How can I be smarter?' because he was like, 'I know that I'm playing stupid, but it was working all the time,' and then it's really hard for him to change his playstyle.

"It was really hard to get a good grip on the team because I don't speak the language, so for example, I didn't listen in scrims because it was useless. I just did what they asked me and tried to get them another view on the game, which I think worked pretty decently."

He then signed for NRG but was immediately told the team was dead after the Major, which led to his signing with FURIA, where he helped the Brazilians break Astralis' winstreak on Nuke with his game plan consisting of "disruptive and stupid plays like going through smokes."

Next came an offer from G2, where Swani would eventually make his breakthrough into the head coach role of a tier-one organization. When the German joined the team, however, he was still in the analyst role, and the team housed a French roster featuring Kenny "⁠kennyS⁠" Schrub, who Swani says was his main focus.

"He is a really emotional guy, and as soon as things don't work out for him in the first round, he starts to tilt a bit, adjust his mouse a bit. He's the kind of guy if he had a good pistol, you knew he was going to pop off, but you could also see the doubts in his head when he was playing a bit slow."

Swani touched on the fact that he fulfilled the role of a mental coach when working with kennyS. "[His problems] were more mental than mechanical. Every player needs individual treatment. It's really important to put the human side first. If you're a good human, you're nice to them, and if you listen to them, you get it back tenfold."

G2 then transitioned to a European team and eventually signed Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač in October 2020, with Swani describing the Bosnian superstar as "the best teammate I worked with in G2 by far."

"He started to bring a lot of reactions to the team, and his game sense was something I haven't experienced before. Combined with his eagerness to learn, even though he was pretty accomplished already, except for winning a Major [smiles], he was so hungry for feedback. That lit a fire under everyone else too," Swani said waxing lyrical about NiKo.

"If people say he is toxic, he is slamming a desk, it's never because he is titled at someone, but because he wants to win so badly or he's mad at himself. He was never toxic to a teammate without a reason, and the reason was always to improve and to win the game."

He was then given the chance to work with another sensational player in Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov, and Swani says the Russian's impact was felt immediately. "As soon as m0NESY joined, we finally had a good AWP. Not to be mean, but AMANEK wasn't an AWPer, and we never had this game-changing AWP that can win us games, at least in the international lineup," he said.

"When we saw what he could do in the first or second practice, we were like 'holy shit, we can start to win tournaments now.'"

While the talent was apparent, m0NESY still needed to improve a lot, which became Swani's role for a while. The German coach recalls the youngster didn't have many strings to his bow and would, for example, start almost all rounds on Mirage in Window, so he worked with him to get several different openings. "When we started giving him openings like this, he began to say he wanted to do them by himself in one or two weeks."

The team then signed a new IGL in Aleksi "⁠Aleksib⁠" Virolainen, and Swani was honest in his assessment of the team. "The team was set up for failure," he recalls, and says that the players didn't fit the system, Rémy "⁠XTQZZZ⁠" Quoniam and Aleksib were both pretty systematic, and the Frenchman's English wasn't the best.

"What we lacked most was that we were too systematic. Ilya was supporting a lot when he should have been more explosive. It was easy to read us, Ilya never did anything crazy with the AWP, and we were pretty execute-heavy."

Swani did reserve some praise for the Finnish captain and said he always had some problems in previous teams in terms of people getting used to his style or his relationship with a coach. "Now you can see what he can do with young players who are buying into his system, trusting him, and doing everything he demands them to do."

All the struggles meant Aleksib was replaced by Rasmus "⁠HooXi⁠" Nielsen, who was a newcomer to the tier-one scene. "It was not easy from the start. It was really hard for him to adapt to an international team," Swani recalls.

"He came from Copenhagen Flames, where he played with friends, and he was never really a tier-one IGL or player before. He had issues adapting. He always told me that he isn't scared but that he respects them all a lot and that it's hard for him to have authority sometimes. The first few months were really tough due to the team dynamic. We also had Justin, who was really silent, and we had to make that work too."

The IGL change was soon followed by Swani taking over the head coach role from XTQZZZ for the first time in his career in what he describes as a sudden change. "I was told 'you are the coach now,'" says Swani, and shares that he didn't have much time to change anything until the end of the year.

"At the World Final [Swani's second event as head coach], we weren't expecting to get out of groups. We got to know HooXi's dad died when we were flying to Abu Dhabi, and when you get that kind of message, you don't think about the tournament. He was thinking about flying back, but he said he wanted to make his dad proud. As bad as it sounds, that put us together like crazy, as the team wanted to do everything for him."

G2 went on to win the tournament, with Swani saying that the win gave them the belief that they could win tournaments for the rest of their time together.

The team went on to win one more Big Event at IEM Katowice but came crashing down at the Paris Major, where they were eliminated with a 1-3 record by fnatic in the Legends Stage. "During the Major, players were tense," he began.

"We didn't want to have this feeling of not qualifying ever again in our lives because it just felt so bad. People were doubting and not trusting each other, and people wanted to make the difference individually, which didn't work. It was very different from what we practiced and the system we wanted to have.

"I also fucked up the veto against fnatic and went with Vertigo. We talked about the map a lot in theory about what we wanted to do. Back then, I was learning and still in the phase of an analyst, where you work on your paper, be prepared, and want to avoid unknown territory. But that was a big mistake and a big learning I took out of this that players are smart and skilled enough to play by their feelings without having talked about the map in theory."

The lackluster form continued at IEM Dallas and BLAST Premier Spring Final 2023, with Swani describing those two events as "their lowest lows."

"We openly talked to HooXi about the fact that he would be removed if he didn't improve his appearance. He was really down, super burned out, fully emo, and if your leader and IGL has his head down all the time, it has a huge effect on the team. We had a long and transparent talk with him about the fact he is our leader. We valued him highly, that's why we had this talk with him, but if he wouldn't improve then it's his bad, and he would be removed.

"It was good that we were transparent and were telling him these things because he realized it as well, he needed some kick up the ass. We took those tournaments as a bit of a vacation, which you shouldn't do, but we saw that it's not going well, and we need to work on the team dynamic. NiKo was calling a bit more on the T side because HooXi didn't feel comfortable. When your leader doesn't feel good and when he's calling stuff, he sounds different. I think this wake-up call really helped him because it revitalized HooXi again."

G2 then returned to world-beating form after the player break and won IEM Cologne, and Swani says that their previous struggles had a big impact on the result. "We were telling him [HooXi] that we appreciate him, that we know we can win trophies with him, that he is a good IGL no matter what the outside says," he recalls.

"At that time, outside noise got to him a lot, which he improved. Now he doesn't give a shit anymore about what people who aren't on the team say. Everyone was telling him that they believed in him and didn't want to replace him, but that he needed to just work on himself, otherwise, it's just unbearable. It was nice to see the turnaround for Cologne."

Swani then talked about the Dane as an IGL and praised his work ethic and his ability to adapt a plan and make his team unpredictable. He did, however, say that HooXi and he were responsible for letting opponents back into the game, as the Dane sometimes wanted to rush things too much, while Swani admits he didn't take enough timeouts and left HooXi alone in games.

A talking point of Swani's coaching tenure was also his apparent lack of authority, and the German says there is something to the observations. "I was always the assistant coach, and the assistant coach is always the good guy and the coach the bad guy.

"I'm also not the kind of guy who has too much authority. I'm 180cm and 70kg, so if TaZ is standing behind you, he just has more authority as well. I was always the good guy, and it's just not a personal trait I have. G2 tried to change me with mental guys, but it's really hard to change your personality."

Toward the end of Swani's stint in the team, G2 enacted one of the more controversial roster changes in recent times by swapping Justin "⁠jks⁠" Savage for Nemanja "⁠nexa⁠" Isaković. "Justin is the type of guy that is more quiet, and you sometimes need to pull everything out of him. It's hard in a team dynamic where you travel so much and have to be transparent with each other, and you don't improve as a team if not everyone is giving their opinion.

"peca also said that he would get visibly frustrated on camera, and a player like huNter- gets easily affected by this. It was just a team thing where we felt like we hit the ceiling, so we needed to make a change, and the change was to have better communication from our lurk," he said while ending the answer by reiterating that he feels that the decision was the correct one. [Editor's note: The interview was conducted prior to nexa's benching].

Swani eventually stepped down from G2 at the end of 2023 and retired in April 2024, bringing an end to a very successful and unusual career. "When I was lying in bed, I was asking myself if I really wanted this. It got to 'no' and then back to 'yes.' All my career I was analyzing CS:GO, and had a lot of issues adapting to CS2, finding new stuff and tricks that you do with the smoke. I'm not a fan of building your game plan around random stuff, which took away some of the fun for me," he said about the decision.

Despite all this, Swani finished the interview by stating that his love of the game has not waned, but that he doesn't want the stress of having to perform and travel, and that he intends to remain in esports.