Brollan: "I always wanted to be an IGL, but it came sooner than I was expecting"

The Swede says his teammates were really excited for him to start calling.

MOUZ made the shock decision to bench Kamil "⁠siuhy⁠" Szkaradek after just one game in 2025, with Lotan "⁠Spinx⁠" Giladi coming in to replace their IGL. That meant Ludvig "⁠Brollan⁠" Brolin had to take up calling, and the Swede says he is enjoying the trust put in him.

"The coach and the staff all trusted me and said I'm up to it, and I got a lot of trust from the players as well," he told HLTV after MOUZ qualified for the PGL Cluj-Napoca playoffs.

Brollan also talked about his plan to become an in-game leader at some point in his career, Dennis "⁠sycrone⁠" Nielsen's guidance, and revealed the hardest thing about being an IGL.

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You made the playoffs right at the end, but it wasn't exactly easy. How do you look back at your first group stage as an IGL of your full team?

It was really fun, I'll start with that. It was frustrating in some moments, of course, that we didn't manage to pull off both in the Falcons and the FaZe games. But overall, it was nice to try and get some experience. For example, when we played FaZe, they made a comeback. You have some important calls you need to make, and then you feel the pressure on these things.

It was a good experience overall and I really enjoyed it. Obviously, when you're an IGL, you need to sacrifice the time to improve as much as possible. We're mid-season, and I need to work harder than before, basically. It's exhausting, but at the same time, I like it a lot.

Did you come into this expecting a certain result, or is it just about getting some experience and matches as an IGL under your belt?

You want to win as much as you can, but in the end, I think the experience is more important for now. We are still trying to test the waters at the moment, and we'll see how it goes, but I think we're playing well. We just need to close out some matches. For example against Falcons, I think we threw a little bit on the Mirage second map, and they managed to come back and win the third map, and the same right now with Virtus.pro.

I felt we had it a little bit under control on Inferno, and then they managed to come back into the map. We just need to have our foot on the gas all the time and try to improve more on that, but overall, I think it was just a good experience. Now we're in the playoffs, and everything from now on is just a bonus because we obviously want to win, but we don't have a set goal at the moment, especially for this tournament.

Talking about your IGL move; was it something that you contemplated for a while before committing, something that you thought could happen at some point in your career?

Yeah, I always wanted to be an IGL in the future, especially maybe for the Swedish teams when I quit the international teams, but it came sooner than I was expecting. The coach and the staff all trusted me and said I'm up to it, and I got a lot of trust from the players as well, and they were really excited for me to start calling.

It helps me a lot on the road to actually improve and be more trusted in these things. I need more experience, but of course, I need more trust from the players. We're working on it, and you can't get 100% trust from the team from day one.

Do you see yourself staying in the role? Because we saw a few players, for example device, IGL for a couple of months, then stopped. Is this your role now?

It's hard to say. Obviously, I want to improve in the IGL role. I've been in the space creator role first of all, and then I went to MOUZ and became a lurker, and now I'm an IGL. I just don't want to look too much ahead of it, I don't want to think I'm not an IGL in one year, for example. I just want to improve what I'm doing right now and see how it goes.

I know you don't have a lot of experience yet, but what would you say is the hardest thing to get used to when becoming the IGL?

Trying to focus a little bit on the individual level. I think my teammates are doing so well that I don't need to carry them sometimes, but I think this is maybe the hardest one, to put more time into the individual form. But if I'm talking in-game, it's maybe a little bit hard to manage everyone in two words, basically.

I get a lot of help from sycrone, and he has given me some tips that are really easy to think about, and the same with my mental coach. I just need to try to improve as a leader as well, but I get a lot of trust from the team.