Sonic: "It's not a pretty situation; it's very unfortunate for the new guys to come into a situation like that"

The South African player admitted that he had strong reservations about staying on the team after the Major.

Wildcard's run at FISSURE Playground 1 came to an early end following a 2-0 loss to FURIA in Group A's lower bracket on Wednesday. The Americas team started out brightly in Belgrade, taking a map off GamerLegion in convincing fashion, but then lost four maps in a row without putting up much of a fight.

Wildcard made a slew of surprising changes during the off-season, bringing in Jaxon "⁠Peeping⁠" Cornwell and promoting academy AWPer Sebastian "⁠fr3nd⁠" Kuśmierz while benching Peter "⁠stanislaw⁠" Jarguz and Love "⁠phzy⁠" Smidebrant. With that, the IGL role went to Aran "⁠Sonic⁠" Groesbeek, who admitted that he was already making plans to move elsewhere.

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"I was supposed to go to a different team, I won't say which, but Wildcard asked me to stay so we could retain the core," Sonic told HLTV. "I was very disagreeing at first, I didn't want to do that, but we came to an agreement mutually where I'd remain with the team for the foreseeable future, just to get things in order and help the new guys until the roster can be fully developed."

Sonic admitted that it's a "very unfortunate" situation that Peeping and fr3nd joined the team during such a chaotic moment and didn't hide the fact that there's a strong chance he will jump ship in the near future.

Currently ranked 44th in the world, Wildcard will travel back home to compete in local qualifiers and earn some tournament invites. The team's future is unclear, but Sonic is focused on making the best out of a difficult situation.

"I'll take things day by day, I still have a job to do and it's a job I agreed to do," he said. "My job is to prepare this team with the time we have as well as I can and get the players as comfortable as they can be, and make sure that the players are in the right positions that they should be, and just get them up to speed."

Listen to the interview here.

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Sonic, a 2-0 loss to FURIA and you are out of the tournament. Can you give me your thoughts on the two matches you played here?

Leading up to the games, we did as much work as we possibly could in our four-day span as a team together. To be honest, it was quite an overflow of knowledge and information for the new guys to take up. There are four players in the team who are playing different roles, plus them being new in the team, so it's a big learning experience and a learning curve for the new guys coming in.

So our expectations for the tournament were quite low. I didn't expect everyone to know everything right away, remember the strategies, remember the grenades, but to my surprise our first game against GamerLegion went quite well. I think we actually could have won that match, and to be honest our experience in the team let us down toward the end when we were quite close to closing out Ancient. The team maybe felt like, 'Oh, we can do it, we can really do it,' and usually with a young and inexperienced roster, that's often where you fall short. And so we did.

But regardless of the loss, I think everyone was happy with the way we played, and then coming into today against FURIA, it's a whole different beast. FURIA have been looking quite good with the addition of molodoy and YEKINDAR, and they play a much more aggressive style compared to GamerLegion, and that is quite hard to deal with unless you're a very cohesive team. To be honest, we obviously just weren't ready. It was overwhelming for everyone, and it was overwhelming to me as a caller, especially when not everyone is doing the strats properly and no one's remembering the utility, it was kind of hopeless because you don't know what will work even with things we know or should know are not working. It just proved to be a very difficult game and obviously led to the loss.

It's probably a little bit rough right now, but what are the main positives that you can take away from this tournament? Do you think that especially the performance you had yesterday shows the potential of this roster?

I think so. I said to the guys that we need to treat this tournament purely as a learning experience. As I said, our expectations realistically... we didn't come here to win and everyone knew that. Obviously we didn't come here to get stomped as hard as we did against FURIA, but I guess the positives you can take away from that is, for the new guys, what it really takes to win, and the work and the dedication, concentration and the effort from the individuals in the team needs to be high. It's one thing to watch a team play online and it's another thing to be on the receiving end of that team. It's a big deal.

So I'm happy the guys could gain some experience. I'm happy that I could get some experience IGLing. Obviously this isn't the way I'd like to do it, I would like to do it in a way where I have more time to actually prepare, but we tried to do a lot of what we had from the previous roster, condense it and put it into this team with the short amount of time so we can have something for this tournament.

I wanted to ask about the changes made during the off-season, which came as a surprise to a lot of people. There were rumors for a while that you were looking at Brazilian players. How involved were you in those changes? It felt that the organization was shooting in many different directions at the same time.

Yeah, to be honest, if you want real answers you're probably going to have to talk to management at Wildcard. I was under the impression that I was exiting the team before the Austin Major, and then come after, a lot of things were happening behind the scenes. There were some clashes, disagreements, differing visions...

During the Major or after the Major?

During and after. I thought I was the one who was exiting the team and I made plans to exit the team, and then I guess it went in the direction that stanislaw was being removed from the lineup and phzy was also being removed, and that came as a shock to a lot of us. But, funnily enough, I knew about that and I thought everyone knew about that, but they didn't. I was supposed to go to a different team, I won't say which, but Wildcard asked me to stay so we could retain the core. I was very disagreeing at first, I didn't want to do that, but we came to an agreement mutually where I'd remain with the team for the foreseeable future, just to get things in order and help the new guys until the roster can be fully developed.

So do you think your leaving can still happen sometime in the future?

Absolutely.

But considering that, that you're trying to make the best out of the situation that is a little bit messy, what does that say about the prospects of the team for the rest of the season?

It's not a pretty situation, and to be honest it's very unfortunate for the new guys to come into a situation like that, especially when we're cutting the player break short and everything feels kind of rushed. It's an intense time, an emotional time for the guys. fr3nd is supposed to eventually come into the IGL role, but we thought, because I had all the knowledge of the previous roster and the strategies and the way we played, that it'd be best for me to lead the team and make it more comfortable and understand our playstyle before he takes up that role.

Being the IGL, you said you're the best person on the team to do that job. Is that something you still want to do in the future, be that in this team or another?

I don't think that's entirely where my strength lies. I think I'm very capable at it, I'm very vocal, I understand the game well, and if I have a team who has a strong playstyle, is very comfortable in the game, knows their strategies, grenades, everyone can play their roles well, then absolutely I can be a great IGL, I think.

What are your first impressions of fr3nd and Peeping, especially Peeping, because a lot of people see him as one of NA's most promising players?

Peeping is an extremely talented young player, he's very young and so are the other guys on the roster, in fact the whole roster is quite young. He's great mechanically and he's quite vocal, but his inexperience probably lets him down a little bit. For instance, in communication Americans are very vocal but aren't necessarily vocal in the right ways. They tend to clutter communication, they don't communicate efficiently, and that's something he really needs to work on. He's also not used to playing high-level CS, where you play methodically, you play with your head, it's not just run-and-gun.

It's also about setting up the people around you to make the plays happen for yourself. That's something he wasn't used to. For instance, if he wants to run up B on Inferno and take car control, he would just say what he's doing, but what we're trying to bring out of him is to set it up, he can say, 'I wanna run up banana, I wanna take up car control, can someone smoke this and another guy hold flashes, and come through it on the flashes behind me?' He doesn't set up the plays like that, and some of the other guys are like that too.

They were actually learning quite quickly. Peeping actually adapted very fast into his role and his communication, and Sebastian, [fr3nd], he has a bit more experience because he's from Europe, and he's a very nice guy, a great guy to play with, but he also made some mistakes about moving around the map as an AWPer without giving up your life so easily, or about when to actually take your AWP peeks where the risks outweigh the rewards. We had a conversation about that, and he also adapted very quickly. I think it's very promising for the young guys.

What is the plan right now? You don't have any invites at the moment and you are ranked 44th in the world right now - are you planning on going back to NA, grind some tournaments to try to get some invites?

We do have two qualifiers in North America, so the plan initially is to go back to America, play those qualifiers and hopefully do well in them. We'll see where it goes from there. And maybe some bootcamps in Europe.

And in terms of the plans for the rest of the season, you just came from the Major, it was a little bit rough, but going back to the Major is a priority for the team?

Absolutely. I'll take things day by day, I still have a job to do and it's a job I agreed to do. My job is to prepare this team with the time we have as well as I can and get the players as comfortable as they can be, and make sure that the players are in the right positions that they should be, and just get them up to speed. That's the plan.