HooXi interview: Benching, dealing with criticism, and post-G2 future

The Danish captain sat down with HLTV to discuss his time with G2 and what lies ahead for him.

In one of the largest overhauls of the player break so far, G2 announced the benching of in-game leader Rasmus "⁠HooXi⁠" Nielsen nearly one week ago, putting an end to a nearly two-year-long tenure for the Dane in the international side's ranks.

HooXi helped his team to secure the prestigious IEM Katowice and IEM Cologne titles in 2023, but G2 struggled to find further victories elsewhere, leading to a significant amount of criticism being heaped upon the captain.

The European side's recent campaign in IEM Dallas added further fuel to the fire, as G2 hoisted the trophy with Jake "⁠Stewie2K⁠" Yip in lieu of HooXi, suggesting to fans that the team was capable of claiming wins without their current leader on the server.

Shortly after his official move to G2's bench, HooXi spoke with HLTV at length regarding a wide range of topics, sharing details of his two years with the team, discussing the additions of Mario "⁠malbsMd⁠" Samayoa and Janusz "⁠Snax⁠" Pogorzelski, and what the Dane's hopes and plans for the future are.

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When you were told that you were getting benched and put up for sale, what was the primary feeling? Sadness? Relief in a way, perhaps?

The immediate feeling was definitely disappointment. In London, I got told that they were exploring other options but that nothing was set in stone, so I had been sitting with a slight hope of staying, especially since the decision dragged out for so long.

The announcement of your benching came several days after nexa was removed from the team; by then, it had been reported that G2 were looking to sign malbsMd. Was there a world in which you continued on the team? Were you involved in the planning of the squad for the upcoming season at all? Were you consulted on the malbsMd signing?

From what I was told, there was a chance I would keep my spot. I was asked for my opinion on nexa. But besides that, no.

As you watched the team win the IEM Dallas trophy without you, what was on your mind? Did you think, 'I might be in trouble'?

I was thinking of one thing, and that was to help the guys as much as possible to get the best result. Coming up to the tournament and during most of it, I was working as hard as usual. Some would say it was like digging my own grave, but when I am on a team, and especially for this long, they become family to me and I don’t put myself before that.

What are your thoughts on your replacement, Snax? He has a lot of experience as a player (not so much as a captain) and represents a firepower upgrade. But given that he's fairly new to the role, how do you think the team will fare?

I don’t know much about Snax as a leader, but him being Polish might create a good dynamic between TaZ and Snax to get off to a good start. I also think it’s going to be tough to analyze the changes individually since malbsMd for nexa is also a big change.

With malbsMd coming in to replace nexa, one of the main talking points is the potential role clash. Is that a concern that you share?

I haven’t talked to the team about malbsMd or to malbsMd himself at all. I don’t know their plans at all, but I doubt G2 would sign someone with the same roles as Nemanja without dealing with that issue first.

How would you describe your time with G2? Is there anything you regret or wish you had done differently? Maybe the Major veto?

My time in G2 has been a rollercoaster ride in a lot of ways. I don’t really regret anything because I have been giving it my all for two years and I have done what I thought was the best to do in the moments when I was in them. I wish I would’ve done better in a lot of areas looking back at it, but it’s not with a feeling of regret. The cost is losses and, in the end, my spot, and the gain are learning and experience.

Do you think things would have been different if you had won the Major in Copenhagen?

Without a doubt. That is why Majors are so special, they write the script until the next one comes around.

There's this narrative that you couldn't properly set up NiKo and m0NESY as a captain and that the team's win in Dallas proved that. What are your thoughts on that?

There is? I’ve never heard that before. A guy like NiKo is very easy to work with in the sense that he will come to you with suggestions and ideas and you just kind of have to pick and choose, and it’s more a partnership than a one-way street of me setting him up for success. For Ilya, it’s also pretty easy but in a different way. You just have to unleash him. If you put a player like that into a strict system with chains on him he will still be good but not great. I think that, as he grows and gets older, he will start to take more responsibility, and maybe the fact that we are speaking English is also holding him back a bit.

Now that this chapter of your career is closed, how do you look at all the criticism leveled at you? Do you feel that you were unfairly targeted at times? How did all this negative attention impact you, inside and outside the game?

I think the amount of criticism at times has been fair, but I also think it became a trend to hate me sometimes. I think I have been on par with a lot of the other IGLs individually in CS2, with roles and playstyle taken into consideration, and I don’t think my level was a huge issue on this team. And I think I was improving a bit until EPL, but after that it was obviously tough to show more.

I realized after winning the World Final, getting first in the BLAST group stage and winning IEM Katowice that if I didn’t get some recognition from this period, then I would never get it, and the general view was that this team would have done the same with any IGL. After that, I stopped taking opinions from the outside too seriously.

The community has this perception that G2 is NiKo's team and that everything that happens goes through him. But from what I was told, he was actually one of your biggest supporters. Is that assessment accurate? Can you reveal what he told you after your benching?

I hope everyone understands that the whole “NiKo CEO” thing is the biggest meme. He gets to voice his opinion and he is by nature not a guy who just leans back and says nothing. But there’s a huge difference between being able to voice your thoughts and them becoming reality. So to answer your question, that assessment is ridiculous.

I talked with him (and everyone else on the team individually) after I got the news in London. While I got some feedback I never really heard anything that would be bench feedback worthy.

I wanted to ask you about Stewie2K's comments about some of the issues he came across while playing for the team. He said that some of the players didn't seem to respect TaZ too much and that it was a tense atmosphere where players didn't openly talk about the issues at hand. Did you feel this, too?

The issue of not talking openly on the team has been a problem since the day I joined the team. I tried to push for some team talks and encourage everyone to speak up freely, but it was never really a high priority, unfortunately. In the end, this issue also played a big part in me being benched, I assume.

For Wiktor, I think everyone respects him. As a person, he is great, and with the career he had as a player, he is a living legend. As a coach, he is new, though. I was very happily surprised with him at the start, but at some point, I think his priorities switched a bit in the team and we never really came back on track. This is something I really wish I could be a part of.

Talking about your future: what sort of team are you looking for? Do you think you'll find a new team fairly quickly, or is there a chance you'll wait a bit and see what happens? Because your benching was announced quite late in the off-season…

I think it will be really tough to find a new team immediately as the decision from G2 came this late. I’ll try to look at it as an opportunity to work on myself, both in-game and outside the game, since it’s hard to have a good balance in life, especially as an IGL, at least in the way I’ve been doing things until now.

Are you open to the possibility of joining a team that is a level below G2? One that is not inside the top 10 or challenging for trophies.

My biggest priority is to win and to do well in CS. I can’t say if I will be able to pick and choose, but I have been benched once before and that was one step backward and five forward.

What are you looking for in your next project?

I have some key values that are very important to me as a person and player, and I’m hoping to find a team that shares these values with me. Not to say that I didn’t have any of this in G2, but this is what I believe it takes for me to show my best self in the future. I’m looking for a team where hard work, honesty, and sacrifice for the team are top priorities. I think every teammate I’ve ever had can attest to the amount of work I put in, and I’m always looking to improve the team. When you get an entire team with that same mindset, some amazing things can happen.

When it comes to style, my goal is to mix my preferred playstyle with the strengths of the players I’d be playing with. I prefer a loose playstyle, with a lot of responsibility on the individuals. The goal is to get everyone on the same page in terms of how to react to situations, so everyone is comfortable taking initiative. But again, to achieve that you need a full team of people giving it their all, every day. So to boil it down, the most important thing is probably to find a team as hungry as me, with high ambitions. I have so much more to prove.

What do you think you still have left to achieve?

I have so much left still, I have hardly begun. The highest highs a CS team can reach on paper are winning a Major and a Grand Slam. For me, there are also a bunch of individual goals, so there are a lot of motivators for me. Hopefully, I will get to show that as soon as possible.