dupreeh on Astralis: "If true, it's a poor decision, especially when we had players on medical leave due to stress and burnout"

The five-time Major winner was critical of his former organization.

Falcons have been through a well-documented rough patch since their entrance into Counter-Strike, and recent results suggest the story is set to continue in the coming months.

The team suffered an early exit from ESL Pro League and now comes into BLAST Fall Final as the lowest-ranked team in attendance, something Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen hopes will allow the team to play more free-flowing Counter-Strike.

During the media day, which is boycotted by several in-game-leaders due to the situation involving Casper "⁠cadiaN⁠" Møller and Astralis, the Dane also spoke to HLTV about his expectations for the tournament, roster rumors surrounding the team, and gave his thoughts about the Astralis controversy.

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You're here at your home event, Fall Final, after a lackluster showing at EPL. How is the team feeling coming into this tournament?

We are in a difficult place, I think that's fair to say. We expect more of ourselves as a team, as individuals and everything, so there's a feeling of not meeting expectations from different perspectives. So that is difficult to navigate through, but of course, we've had our talks after EPL, and we've tried to focus on what we can improve on coming into this tournament.

At least for the Danes, it's an important tournament, because we have a chance of playing in front of our families, and playing on home soil is always nice. For us Danes, this maybe means more, so we've tried to get ourselves to a place where we can leave the bad things behind, move on, and try to get things going as well as we can.

You say this is a difficult period for the team. Results haven't gone your way, and zonic said to Dust.dk in Cologne that if these results continue, changes have to happen. There have been some rumors about NiKo joining shortly after. Does that add some extra pressure to the team, or is that something that you expect when you play for a team like Falcons?

I think as any professional player, or whatever you do in life, you know that you are dependent on performance. That comes both from an individual performance, but also as a team performance and how the group functions. Everyone in the team understands that the results cannot continue like this, and I don't think anyone is actually benefiting from it, it's difficult for everyone, for both the players and the team. So everyone is on the same page about the fact that we need to do better or there will be changes, that's of course mandatory in every sport.

And for me as an individual, I've tried to always see the bright side of everything. I know that if you are in a team and you're not performing, then there's probably someone else who will come and take your place. So for me, it's always about bringing the best version of myself and trying to improve and prove that I am good enough to be in this team or in any other team, whatever I play.

So I think internal competition is always good for a team in some sense, especially if it's used in the right way, and I don't think there's anyone in the team that is doing this on purpose. We're not trying to play badly on purpose, that wouldn't really make sense. So I don't think it has done anything bad. We know that the ultimate thing that can happen is that we will get changes, and everyone understands that.

You have some very good individuals who know what it takes to win, and you've worked with Magisk and your coach for a long time. Did the team come to the conclusion that maybe a change would be beneficial? Because as you said, no one is benefiting from the current situation.

I think everyone is doing their best in the team and trying to contribute as best as possible. We continue to work the way we were doing it and we still hope and expect that we will eventually turn it into something good. We have a Major coming up, and we all want to do well there. If it's another bad result at the Major, then that is just what it is, and then I guess every team would probably have tried to change something up.

I don't know what's going to change, that's really not on my table, I'm just here to try to do my best to prove that I belong here. That is my sole goal for being in Falcons, to help the team be better. It's been tough for everyone in the project because we all come from past teams that made deep runs and won tournaments, so it's been a difficult challenge trying to navigate this.

We've all tried being a team where [despite the fact] we're having a really bad period, not really playing that well, and making a lot of mistakes, that we're still spending a lot of time right now trying to figure out why we are all of a sudden not playing to the player potential. That's the main concern that I have right now, but I just focus on trying to play well individually.

Talking about hard work. In Cologne and in the first stage of BetBoom Dacha, you guys showed a better game than we saw from you previously, so there was some gradual improvement over time. What did you work on so far that helped you reach this stage, and what do you feel you are still missing to reach your goal?

We worked a lot on keeping up the positive mindset and believing that we will turn it around. That has been our main focus, and I think it would be the same everywhere. If you keep getting poor results, then eventually you will also start feeling like, 'Ah, this is not really going that well, what are we doing wrong?' You're constantly looking for the answer somehow, so that is what we've been trying to not focus on.

We've tried to work on what we actually can improve, like what is happening inside the server and outside the server. In terms of the mood in the team, the fact that we are losing so many pistol rounds and anti-ecos. The main struggle in-game right now is that we seem to make it very difficult for ourselves sometimes.

During a lot of the games we play, it seems like we need to fight so hard for every single round, it's very rare that we had [a comfortable] game. I think we've had one against ATOX at Pro League, but that is also a team that we expected to beat. It's just mentally tough to always have to fight 120% for every single round.

Obviously, we're also lacking that one single star player who just goes in and gets three kills, so you get an easy round and force the opponents to eco. We're lacking that star performance sometimes, that is for sure.

We just need to try and keep a positive mindset and work on the mistakes that we actually have on our plate and know we can fix. We will never be able to fix all the mistakes, they will continue, but we need to minimize them a lot. And then also getting good starts in matches and winning some pistols will probably help us a lot. [laughs]

Looking at the Fall Final here, Falcons are the lowest-ranked squad at the event. Does that give you more of an underdog mindset coming into the tournament and lift some pressure off your shoulders?

I hope so. Winning the Showdown was a very nice achievement in some sense for where we are as a team right now. It was nice that we managed to kind of win something and make it here because it was important for the Danes, and it was nice to feel that we could actually be among the good teams.

Of course, we will be the underdog in any matchup we go into, and I hope that it will help us to relieve some of the pressure and maybe also play a little bit more risky, dare to take some more gambles, and see how that works for us instead of always feeling like 'We need to win this matchup, we are better players than these guys, we are a better team overall.'

Because sometimes it can also be a little bit of an issue, because we have expectations for ourselves and don't meet them, and then it gets a little bit tough. So, yes, I hope this event will ease off the pressure a little bit and that we just go into the game knowing that if we actually lose this one, that is what everyone expects.

Your former organization, Astralis, came into this tournament with a bit of controversy due to a roster change, and your captain Snappi is also not present here on media day. Do you have anything to say about this whole situation, either individually or in the name of your team?

On a personal note, I haven't put that much effort into understanding the whole case or getting all the details, but what I've heard is that Astralis tried to get cadiaN to play instead of br0 by using the clause to add an emergency stand-in. I remember FaZe back in the day, and I also think we had HEROIC not so long ago where they were forced to play with their coach, which kind of says it all.

Astralis has somehow managed to dodge that and get to play with cadiaN instead of actually using their coach by saying that he's sick or whatever. So if that is the case, that they actually came to this conclusion by lying about someone being sick, then of course I don't really agree with that. I think that is a poor decision, especially with the history that I had with Astralis, when we had players taking a medical leave due to stress and being burned out.

If it comes to the fact that that is the truth, then I obviously think it's a really poor decision. But I leave all kinds of judgments to BLAST and to whoever is out there to make the right call, and then I will see what will happen in the end. But right now, with the rumors that I heard about, I think it's kind of poor.