huNter-: "Swani will stay and be our coach"

G2 continue their good form in the new season with a winning start at BLAST Premier Spring Groups.

G2 came into the BLAST Premier Spring Groups fresh from a title-winning campaign at BLAST World Finals at the end of last season, ending their five-year-long trophy drought in the process.

The European team continued their form in the new year by dispatching of German squad BIG in a relatively-straightforward 2-0 victory, giving themselves a good platform to qualify for the Spring Final.

After their win, Nemanja "⁠huNter-⁠" Kovač shared his thoughts on the new season and gave some information about Jan "⁠Swani⁠" Müller's position in the team.

Congrats on the win. It must be nice to start 2023 with a good performance?

First of all, thank you. It's always important to win the first game of the season and it's never easy to do it. So I'm really happy because of it and yeah, we need to keep it up now.

It's also probably nice that you managed to close out Mirage, given what a close map it was?

Yeah, we started really well. We were leading 8-0 and then after we lost seven rounds in a row, maybe we were thinking that we'll close it out really easily, but in the end, we closed it out somehow. It was not pretty but I'm really happy that we did it, the win also gives us two days off here before playing the next game against NAVI or NIP. So yeah, we need to see what we did well and keep that, and also what we did badly and improve those things.

So about Inferno, do you think that you managed to take the confidence from closing out Mirage into the second map?

Yeah, I think Mirage helped us for sure mentally wise compared to BIG. We started really quick on Inferno as well, we were leading 6-1. Then we lost some really stupid rounds like a 3vs3 post-plant situation, and so on. We gave them the chance to come back on Inferno and it wasn't pretty either.

I would say on the CT side we were really comfortable and that makes me really happy because we were struggling a lot at the end of the season with CT inferno, while we played the T side amazingly. We were winning like eleven or twelve rounds almost always and we were fighting to win four or five rounds on CT to close it out almost every time. So yeah, I'm happy that we managed to close it out with a good CT side this time.

You obviously ended last year with a title and thus decided to keep the same roster going into 2023. Do you think that will help you get up to speed quicker, given that Katowice and EPL are just around the corner?

Yeah, I'm really happy because we didn't change anything because like in the last three player breaks we were changing something in the team. Of course, we will not change after winning in Abu Dhabi at the end of the year, there is no reason to change. We have a great team, I have great teammates around me, great players, we have great chemistry between us right now and we are going game by game.

We are not thinking too much about what is in one month. Now we are playing BLAST, and we are trying our best to qualify for the Spring Finals. This is our main goal. And then when we come to Katowice, EPL, and everything else, because there are a lot of events this year, we'll talk about it step by step.

Swani is still standing behind the team. Can you shed some light on the coaching situation at G2?

Swani is our permanent coach, we are not looking for other coaches. He will stay and be our coach because, as I said, we were changing things almost every player break in the last three or four times. Now we won in Abu Dhabi and after everything that happened to us, after losing in the RMR, after losing our coach and manager, we stayed together. We didn't stop believing in ourselves during this time, and Swani was with us all the time as a big part of it. There's no reason to change for now at least, he will be our coach for the future. We really don't want to add somebody who will ruin the atmosphere and chemistry that we are having right now.