EliGE: "We need to start becoming that team that is at minimum playoffs"

The North American star opened up about Complexity's struggles and what he hopes his team can achieve in Cologne.

Complexity are one victory away from the group stage of IEM Cologne 2024 after beating world No.96 ALTERNATE aTTaX 2-0, setting up a match against the winner of Eternal Fire vs. Falcons in the next round.

The North American team traveled to Germany after a widly mixed showing in the BLAST Premier Fall Group. They got off on the wrong foot, losing to an AWPer-less HEROIC, but improved as the tournament went on and played out competitive series against Spirit and Natus Vincere.

For Complexity, 2024 has been a disappointing year. The ESL Challenger Jönköping title is not enough to ease the pain of all those playoff misses, with Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski admitting that his team needs to make more deep runs. "We need to start becoming that team that's at minimum playoffs, start showing that we're a top-10 team or we deserve to be a top-10 team in the world," he told HLTV.

The 27-year-old rued the mistakes that keep costing Complexity but said there are "a lot of good things" to take from their recent BLAST matches. "We're making it harder for other teams to play against us. So, we definitely have things that we can build off of in a positive way, from the BLAST Groups and continuing here."

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A 2-0 victory to start off the tournament. I guess the second map was closer than many expected. Was it harder than you expected?

I think it's about in line with what we expected, being like the overdogs in the series. I think that we were in control of most of the game for both maps, honestly. It's just that we lost both pistols on Anubis, and we could've even had a better game on Inferno. But yeah, I think it was in line with expectations.

I wanted to ask you about one specific moment on Inferno, where hallzerk won that 1v5, and then the next round you almost lost to an eco. Was it like a reflection of the team's current struggles, where you are making some mistakes in some very basic stuff, something that you and T.c. have talked about? Where every game feels like a grind sometimes.

It definitely does. In this situation, I feel like, in the first half, the 5v3s we were losing were a little bit more symbolic of that. I think we have a lot of talented players that can pull off some really good rounds and make a lot of crazy stuff happen, like that 1v5 from hallzerk, which was really nice. But it's more about us just being more comfortable with letting the enemies make mistakes, is what I think it is. Because a lot of the rounds, if we just tuck into a corner, play off contact and just let the round happen when we're in these advantages, then we're going to win them more often. We have to keep working on that.

It has been a rough start to the season for the team. Results haven't always gone your way, but it feels, at least from the outside, that there is some tension in the team. I could tell whether it was ALTERNATE aTTaX or you winning a round because they were getting so loud. In your team, it doesn't seem that anyone is lifting the team up and trying to bring everyone up when you're going through some struggles. Do you feel that way?

Well, I think that it's just hard because we've just been having a really tough year. I think that overall, results aren't what we would want from ourselves. We're not making the playoffs in a lot of these tournaments and we're losing out in groups. So that just doesn't feel good. And we need to build back up to that. And, you know, we don't have a ton of super-hype guys that are doing speeches or anything like that. But I think that we just need to keep on building slowly. We need to work on our fundamentals and secure more of the rounds that are definitely in our hands, where if we just play the time and play the round correctly, then we're going to win them.

And then we're going to start feeling better because, you know, when you lose so many heartbreaking rounds, per game, per tournament… Like, it feels that in almost every series, there are a billion heartbreakers that are, like, 'Wow, how did we just lose that?' type feelings. Then it's definitely mentally draining. We need to work on that, and that's when it's going to get better.

Do you think this is the right tournament to build up some momentum for the rest of the season?

I definitely hope so. I think it was nice that we had such an advantage in our first series where we can build the rounds back where we can feel more confident. Especially in these first two maps that we played, I think there were a lot of good rounds that we can highlight. And it's not super stressed where we can feel out how it feels in the round and identify what's making these mistakes happen, what we need to work on specifically. And it's just a little bit less pressure, so it kind of makes it easier to diagnose what exactly we should be fixing, if that makes sense.

We have so many rounds to work on for examples, but I think it's just nice in a tournament when you can get those reps in where everyone is feeling how it should, man advantages are working out for us and we're winning the rounds cleanly, not giving up a bunch of advantages. So as the tournament progresses, we obviously want to keep going with that. It's nice that the bracket is double elimination. We're already through the first game. And then we have another one tomorrow. And we need to just keep building. Hopefully, we win that one and we can have a good start to the actual tournament.

You had a rough start to the BLAST Groups. You lost to HEROIC, who had a stand-in, won the next two series, took a map off Spirit and had a close map against NAVI. What lessons did you learn from that tournament?

The biggest lesson to me is just making sure when we're in the man advantages that we need to play the fundamentals better because we're just making a lot of really basic mistakes consistently and that has been a thing for like a long time now, but I think identifying the problem and the solution is that we need to just play more calmly in the situations and just go back to the basics.

We don't have to peek too much in these situations, we can let the rounds come to us. Especially when we're in a lot of these advantage rounds or we're like the overdog of the series. Whatever it is, if we're in the advantage and there's not a lot of pressure on us, we can just let the other team make the mistakes. Like they have to prove that they can know, win the side, or play a long round, whatever it is. So I think that's the main identification from my side of what we need to work on. But as you can see, we have so many really good rounds that we can play. We have tons of high highs, a lot of low lows, and that's pretty much been the story for a while, and we need to keep working on what I just said about making sure that we're not messing up our fundamentals and playing calmly in these high-pressure rounds, and just build off of that momentum.

And from losing to HEROIC with a stand-in to taking a map off Spirit: Were you happy that the team was able to bounce back?

Yeah, I'm definitely happy that we showed a really good face in those games. We should have beaten NAVI in the first game. We beat Spirit in the opener game on Dust2. So there are a lot of good things to take away from it. And it's looking better for our map pool because before… You know, it's difficult when you're only getting wins on Vertigo. So getting that win against Spirit, showing good rounds on Anubis… We're making it harder for other teams to play against us. So, we definitely have things that we can build off of in a positive way, from the BLAST Groups and continuing here.

What sort of expectations did you have heading into this tournament? What would you be satisfied with?

For me, I would just be satisfied making it to the playoffs. That has been the bare minimum goal for me, especially considering how the start of the year went, where we were not even making it to playoffs. So I think just realigning expectations… We haven't been that consistent semi-final team since the beginning of CS2. And now we need to go back to the basics, make sure we're not losing these 5v3s, 5v2s, and get into the playoffs. Because I haven't been to the playoffs of Cologne for a while. I would love to go there. I would love for the guys to experience that as well. Because it's an incredible stage. And the fans are always amazing. And, yeah, I think it would be great to have that experience.

Date	Matches
IEM Cologne 2024 Play-in
08/08/2024	Complexity 19:15 Eternal Fire	Match

One of the main talking points about your team after the recent struggles is that maybe the team needs a change, maybe the team needs to bring in someone new. Are you still confident that this roster can compete at the highest level?

It always looks bad when you have been with a team for a long time and the results aren't getting better or they stagnate or get worse, which is obviously the worst possible conclusion from any type of roster. But I think we have a lot of really positive things going for the team. We have these players that can just make crazy highlights happen, really good mechanics, good reads. I think we have a good macro. We have a lot of things that are going for us, and we have to show results at the end of the day. So we need to start becoming that team that's at minimum playoffs, start showing that we're a top-10 team or we deserve to be a top-10 team in the world.

And, if we can't do that, then that is proof enough if, like, by the end of the year, we can't make that happen. Because it's not enough to, you know, just show up to tournaments and just be happy like losing last place or second-to-last place. That's not fun for anyone. No competitor would be satisfied with that. But I think that we have the pieces that can do that. And now it's up to us as individuals and as a team to work on the problems that we have to make it happen.