EliGE: "I think we all expected to be further along than we are, but that's just the process of it"

"We all thought it was going to take some time," the North American star said as he opened up about the team's "growing pains."

FaZe live to fight another day at BLAST Open Lisbon with a 2-0 victory against Astralis in an elimination match. It was a much improved performance from Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen's troops after Wednesday's defeat to Virtus.pro — a series that culminated in a shocking 13-0 hammering on Dust2.

The manner in which they collapsed on that final map has led to many questions about whether FaZe can live up to the hype generated by the off-season signing of Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski. A five-time HLTV Top 20 player, EliGE has had a hard time adjusting to his new surroundings. He is averaging a 1.09 rating, a sharp decrease from his 1.18 rating with Complexity last year.

"I think we all expected that we would be further along than we are now," he told HLTV after the Astralis match. "But I think that's just the process of it and the reality of how hard it is to have a team dynamic like that, where you have to shift from having someone that was super passive, bringing me, who is really aggressive, and then we have a lot of people who are naturally aggressive."

EliGE also opened up about what went wrong on Dust2 against Virtus.pro and confirmed that FaZe laid Astralis a trap by letting Train slide in the veto. "We always are having a different pool," he said. "We don't necessarily have a home map, and I think it changes match by match."

If you can't see the embed above, you can listen to the audio recording of this interview on Spotify.

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A 2-0 victory to avoid elimination here in Copenhagen. A performance that, I would say, is much more in line with what one would expect from this FaZe roster. Are you happy with the way the team responded to what happened against VP?

 Yeah, I think we came in really strongly today. Everyone was really trusting of all the calls, and everything was working out well. We had good rotations, and we were playing off of ideas very well together. Overall, I think we just showed a really strong performance today.

What happened on Dust2 against VP? It felt like you were never in it, that you were throwing away every advantage you had. What do you think went wrong in that game?

 It is hard to say exactly some overall encompassing reason for all the round losses, but we were in amazing positions in a lot of the rounds. As you said, I think it was four or five man advantages, and there were separate reasons every time. I think towards the latter end of the half it was more about, you know, we had already lost so many of the rounds that we were playing not to lose rather than playing to win, which is understandable. I  mean, at a certain point, when you're down like 7-0 or 9-0, you don't want to lose another man advantage, but then that thinking makes you lose them at the same time.

I don't know if there's exactly an overall encompassing reason, but we know that our performance hasn't been good enough and that's obviously putting on more pressure. It makes mistakes more prone to happening. We're just having to go through them. We did the review, talked about the mistakes, and we just have to keep moving forward, make sure we're open and honest about what we need to fix. And I think that we have been, and we're trying to do everything we can to put on a better show for the next matches.

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karrigan: "You might see some different things from us in the details"

 Reactions to that game were very intense, but the fact is that you were one round away from winning it 2-0. What was the mood like after that game?

Everyone was frustrated, of course.  No one is going to be happy with losing a game like that. But we all knew that it was in the palms of our hands. We almost won 2-0. Honestly, if we had just won the man advantages, that would have looked completely different. I think that was five — I don't know exactly the number, but to me it feels like it was five, just from remembering — , and when you have five gun rounds in a row that you could have won, obviously you have the economy advantage, then you win more rounds.

So overall, it could have been looking completely different. It's just how it is sometimes with those rounds. We just have to put it in the bag. We tried to put it past us, wait until review to talk about it the next day. And that's what we did.

Talking about today's game, Train is a map you were banning all the time. Today, you let it slide in the veto, and you came out very strongly on the map. You were taking every duel, you were not afraid at all. Was that a trap for Astralis?

 I'd say a little bit, maybe a little bit of a trap. You know, karrigan likes doing these types of trap plays, and I think it's really fun. I like that we are able to play a lot of different maps. And we always are having a different pool. We don't necessarily have a home map, and I think it changes match by match because you can never really know in practice how something is going to turn out, what you're going be super strong at. Overall, I think we had a nice map pool, something different from the other ones, to get away from some of the more dusty maps [laughs]. Yeah, it was fun today.

broky had a vintage performance on Train, with a lot of impact and 18 frags on the CT side. He was taking a lot of duels. Are you discussing ways to activate him more, or was he just feeling it on the map?

I would say he was just feeling it.  I felt like we were all just in the zone. Of course, we're always talking about how we can activate each other and how we can get more from everybody. But in this game specifically, I think that there was just a lot of trust in all of the calls. We piggybacked on a lot of the tactics that we were doing, and people were filling in the gaps well. We made good rotations, and everyone hit the shots that they needed to.

And I think that it just makes it very easy, like when you have an AWPer that is not missing those shots and is moving the way he's moving. I think we just had a really good overall team performance. We stood strong together as a team and he played well.

NEO was a little bit coy in the pre-match interview when he was asked if it's been harder to integrate you into the team than he expected. He said something about you coming in with different dynamics after playing for NA teams. I wanted to ask you: almost three months in, did you expect it to be easier to slot into a team like this?

Not necessarily. I mean, we all thought it was going to be difficult because of the roles and that it was going to be a lot of work. It's not going to be easy when you replace someone as good as ropz and he's a passive player by nature. I think that when you completely change a role like that and we have to slot in the gaps, then we're trying to find ways of, 'How can we get everyone feeling the way they want to naturally?' Because if you have three guys that naturally want to play more aggressively and you have to take a step back, then it kind of just changes the dynamic of the team.

Before, when I was playing last year, I was the aggressive guy. So if we wanted aggressive stuff, we kind of knew how we wanted to formulate that stuff. But karrigan wants to make sure that everyone is activating and we're trying to find ways of making it feel good for everybody. And I think we've done a decent job at it.

Obviously, our results haven't been as good, but, to answer your question, I thought it was going to be hard from the start and we all thought it was going to take some time. Growing pains. I think we all expected that we would be further along than we are now. But I think that's just the process of it and the reality of how hard it is to have a team dynamic like that, where you have to shift from having someone that was super passive, bringing me, who is really aggressive, and then we have a lot of people who are naturally aggressive.

Date	Matches
BLAST Open Lisbon 2025
23/03/2025	FaZe 16:10 Spirit	Match

Considering the ups and downs you've had this season so far, how do you view your chances in this tournament? Are you just taking it one game at a time and seeing how it goes?

 For me, it is just taking it one game at a time. I don't think there are any easy matches.  We have an extremely hard group, and we lost our first match already, which was really sad. We obviously could have won it, as we all know. Beating Astralis is just going to be, you know, building blocks. We have to build off of previous success that we've had.

So now that we have that, we are going to keep thinking about what we want to do for our map pool. It's going to be changing each game according to what we think is going to be stronger or weaker versus whichever opponent we're going be playing against. So yeah, I think that it's just game by game. See what's feeling good for us, see what we need to work on, try to play more to our strengths instead of our opponents' weaknesses. I think that would be good.