ztr: "We believe that acoR is such a good player that we should keep our expectations"

GamerLegion are on the hunt for a deep run in their last event of the season.

GamerLegion have had a back-and-forth 2025, reaching playoffs at IEM Melbourne and PGL Bucharest while also missing out on the BLAST.tv Austin Major and going 0-3 at PGL Astana.

The young international side head to IEM Dallas, their final event of the first half of the year, with stand-in Frederik "⁠acoR⁠" Gyldstrand in tow, filling in for Hungarian AWPer Henrich "⁠sl3nd⁠" Hevesi who was unable to attend due to visa issues.

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acoR to stand in for GamerLegion at IEM Dallas

Despite coming off a dismal run in Astana, GamerLegion have started off IEM Dallas on the right foot, taking down French squad 3DMAX 2-1 in a hotly contested series.

Shortly after his team's win over 3DMAX, GamerLegion IGL Erik "⁠ztr⁠" Gustafsson spoke with HLTV regarding the close match, the team's up-and-down performances in 2025, and the team's expectations for the event with acoR.

You can read or watch the interview below, or listen on Spotify.

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How are you feeling after that hard-fought win?

I'm feeling very relieved right now after the long game, and I'm just happy we managed to get it over the line. It looked pretty shaky at times, but just happy now that we managed to win.

How do you think you were able to turn it around after that tough loss on Anubis?

I mean, Anubis has probably been by far our worst map statistically, so we said fuck Anubis, let's just go Ancient now, which is one of our best maps. Then we managed to reset, win Ancient, and then we were feeling good on Nuke.

It's been about six months since acoR has played a game; has it been easy to get him back into the groove?

I would say so. We didn't really put too much pressure on him, I hope, because we tried to keep it simple, add a few needed things on each map and then most of the things we let him do on his own and play his own game. Of course, it's going to take some time to get into the hang of things, but I felt like he did a really good job today.

What are the expectations for this event? You have a win under your belt, but how far do you think you guys can go?

We set a goal for this year in almost every event when we created this roster. We believe that we are a playoffs team, so we should try to make the playoffs every event, and whatever happens after that is, we will see, it's experience for us. I think even though we have a stand-in here, we had a talk, and we said we believe that acoR is such a good player that we should keep our expectations, but maybe with a small grain of salt.

sl3nd as a player has received a lot of criticism. Is that something the team is keeping in mind, particularly if things go well here with a different AWPer?

I would not like to answer that question.

Considering this is your guys' final event for the first half of 2025, how would you rate your season overall?

First half of the year has been a bit of ups and downs, mostly ups. The first two or three events we were one game away from playoffs, then I think we made two or three playoffs now as well. But then there has been those pretty [big] shakeups with the MRQ going out 1-3 or something, and now before coming here we go out 0-3 in an event where the top four teams weren't even there. It's been ups and downs, but I think ending it here with a decent result will make us feel very good about the season so far.

Why do you think Astana went so poorly as compared to Melbourne?

I'm not sure, actually. Maybe we got our expectations too high because we started off the first game playing Spirit, and had chances on both of the maps, and we ended up losing both of them 13-11, I think. That maybe got our egos or expectations a bit higher than they should be. Then we went on to lose against the newly formed FURIA, which we don't really have that much information on, and then we end up losing against HOTU. I think maybe our expectations skyrocketed after that Spirit game.

So that's gonna be something you're focusing on more for later events?

Yeah, try not to make the same mistakes. That's the way of CS, and maybe even life. Try not to repeat the mistakes that end up hurting you.