karrigan: "FaZe magic if you win, not so much magic if you lose"

"I'm a little unhappy with how we played when we had the advantage," added the Danish IGL.

FaZe's recent struggles mean that Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen's troops have only secured one title this year at IEM Chengdu and dropped down to No. 7 in the world rankings.

Their BLAST Fall Final campaign has also not gotten off to the best start, as FaZe lost to G2 before narrowly eliminating Falcons to secure a quarter-final appearance.

After the win against Emil "⁠Magisk⁠" Reif and company, karrigan spoke to HLTV about their games in Copenhagen so far, the struggles his team has been facing, and appearing in front of a home crowd.

If you cannot see the SoundCloud embed above, listen to the interview here.

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Congrats, a hard-fought win in the end. Did it feel like that on the server as well?

Oh yeah. Yesterday, we had unfortunate CT sides and good T sides, today, we had unfortunate T sides and good CT sides. The Ancient game was mentally rough in terms of finding a solution, but I think they adapted pretty well at the end of Ancient.

It felt like you guys went for a lot of re-peeks and a lot of confident plays. Was that something that you discussed coming into the game?

rain said it perfectly, that he rather wants us to overpeek than not peek. The way we played the Mirage CT side against G2 yesterday was much more scared, and it felt like we got outplayed. Normally, we are peeking a little bit more when we are up 8-4, and rain mentioned that he wants us to overpeek a little bit more in the game.

Speaking about yesterday's game. You said you didn't peek or aim as well as you wanted. Was that the biggest difference between a win or a loss?

Yesterday we had four great halves and two bad halves, and that's what cost us the game in the end. Everybody was so disappointed after Mirage, not mad, but [wondering] how we can let it slip like that. Sometimes, when you have a good first half, mentally you're trying to play the round down, and I think we adapted really badly yesterday on the CT side.

We talked about it, and it just happens sometimes. The way we played against Liquid when we came back from 1-11, it was kind of the same way. G2 were calling really well to abuse it, but yeah, I'm not happy with how we adapted as a team.

Despite the loss against G2, it felt like some of the FaZe magic was back. You won a lot of 2v4s and a lot of clutches. Is more of that the main thing you're missing right now?

It's way easier for me to call if we win rounds we shouldn't, but also some of the rounds before we win the 1v3 are rounds we're supposed to. I'm just happy that some of the players stepped up in these 1v3s and 2v4s, but I'm a little unhappy with how we played when we had the advantage and threw them away.

It's part of the game, if it's FaZe magic or not [I don't know], but as long as we win. It can get ugly, it's been like this forever with our team, but yeah. FaZe magic if you win, and not so much magic if you lose.

You're in the quarterfinal now in front of your home crowd. How does that feel?

It's great to be back here playing in Copenhagen, obviously the last few years we played here in the Royal Arena and never won there, so maybe there's a chance to win in Forum. The teams that are here in front of us are playing really good CS, while we're not at our best, so let's just try to enjoy it.

It feels like we haven't had many stage matches since Cologne in the last four or five months, so we're in a position where we can play and maybe something happens. We're not the best at the moment, we know that, but that's also something we can try to use in the game.

You might be the only Danish player in the playoffs. Do you expect the home crowd to cheer for FaZe?

I don't really know what they want to do, I'm just happy to play in front of a crowd and the FaZe fans, if it's in Copenhagen or other countries. I'll do my best to represent Denmark with the flag if I'm the only one there. I think we did alright in the Major until the third map… I didn't represent Denmark so well then, shit happens right, but I'll do my best to enjoy the energy from the crowd. Hopefully, they'll cheer for me, if not, it's fair enough.