JT: "There are encouraging moments, but we don't have time to keep losing"

Complexity's IGL knows his team are under pressure to find results and earn some much-needed VRS points.

Complexity faced a difficult task in the winter off-season, needing to replace superstar Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski and long-standing anchor Ricky "⁠floppy⁠" Kemery. Their year has not started well with home-grown signings Danny "⁠Cxzi⁠" Strzelczyk and Nick "⁠nicx⁠" Lee, as the team has slipped to an 0-6 map record amidst two early tournament exits.

It's not been all doom and gloom for Complexity, however. Their two inexperienced additions have shown glimpses of promise, particularly nicx, and the team was competitive in their losses to Virtus.pro, Eternal Fire and Liquid.

Despite the positive signs, IGL Johnny "⁠JT⁠" Theodosiou is aware that his team need to start picking up some results. "If we go without a win at the third tournament, we're pretty much gonna be out of the scene besides the tier-two tournaments."

JT spoke with HLTV after his team's early elimination in Katowice to discuss their need to start finding wins and his thoughts on his two new players.

If you don't see the embed above, you can listen to the audio version of the interview here.

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Not the start to the season you would have wanted, straight out of Bounty, and now the same thing here. A couple of close calls, though, so tell me about how it went for you.

Of course disappointed, no one would be happy with losing every single game. I know we're in a learning phase and all that, but we need at least a few wins for our ranking and the new VRS system, so it's gonna be really important that we actually get those in our next tournament.

We've had some things that look good, we played some good halves, especially our T sides have been looking really good in my opinion, but we just need to keep working, especially on our CT side and individual mistakes and stuff like that. Just reviewing and trying to get the team into a place to be in tier one. We still have two rookies, so we knew it was gonna be a struggle from the get-go, but the hope was to get a few wins and try and get as far as we can. Now we didn't get any win, so PGL's gonna a really important tournament for us.

Is it just down to those growing pains? Do you still see those close calls as an encouraging sign that you played close against Eternal Fire, Liquid and VP? Is it just regrets, not having that 5% more to be able to take those wins?

I'd say it's encouraging that we are getting close. We are playing only good teams, so it's not like we're in the worst position. The games were pretty close in general, we could have won some of them.

But I'd say I want us to be better, in the next two weeks we have to keep grinding and get better because, in this system, it's really cruel. If we go without a win at the third tournament, we're pretty much gonna be out of the scene besides the tier-two tournaments. There are encouraging moments, but we don't have the time to keep losing, so the next tournament has to be good.

I wanted to ask you about the off-season and being tasked with replacing EliGE. How do you go about replacing a player like that and then deciding to actually make a double change, including removing floppy?

Replacing EliGE is obviously very difficult, it was never gonna be easy, especially when we're staying NA. There's not a lot of talent in NA in general, there's maybe 5-10 players we were looking at picking up and not all of them were actually possible.

Staying in NA is big for Complexity and big for the scene in general that there's a team that's investing in the scene and staying as an actual NA team. Throughout the break I was just watching demos and trying to figure who we're gonna get because it's not as easy as just opening up HLTV and choosing a roster. There's a lot of contract situations and stuff like that.

I'm happy with the guys we got. We have a really good environment, a good working space and we're improving really fast, so I'm hoping that, in the next few weeks, the risks that we took by picking up two rookies from NA is actually gonna pay off. If we can get good, especially with this environment that we have, it'll be a good place to be.

What do you think are these two guys' upsides? Why these two in the end?

There were a few players we looked at before them and they weren't possible, that's the first thing. The second thing is, I was trying to find people that are grinding really hard, playing a lot of games, playing a lot of Counter-Strike in general, trying to change the culture of our team to a team that is playing like 120 hours the past two weeks, practicing as much as possible and putting in as much work as possible.

I think we've succeeded in doing that, but now we just need the wins. We can work as hard as we want, but if we're not winning any games it's still gonna look like shit. I think they're really hard-working players, especially nicx as well has really good mechanics, and I think he's showing that at his first international LAN. There's some upsides that are really showing, but I'm hoping that it gets even better.

How are these guys dealing with the pressure and expectations of not only coming into an organization like Complexity but especially at a time like this, when, as you say, wins are important and it is going to decide how much you're going be able to play in the first season?

We're definitely making some rookie mistakes on the server in these matches. Some of the guys mentioned that they were feeling a little nervous, but it's not really that noticeable when we're playing, I think they're dealing with it pretty well. Every player gets nervous playing games, especially at the start, so I think they're doing pretty well with the nerves and expectations and all that. Not a big issue in my opinion.

Are you staying in Europe for the next couple of weeks before Cluj comes around? What's your plan for that tournament and how are you going to make sure you can pick up some of those important wins there?

Yeah, we're gonna be staying in Europe, straight back to our bootcamp, I think tomorrow aleady. We're bootcamping here in Poland, so it's gonna be a quick ride back to that, and just practicing all the way until PGL. We've already been here for like four, five weeks and it's just gonna continue until PGL ends, I think.