karrigan on beating NAVI: "It literally felt like a playoff game"

FaZe's IGL played the underdog card. "In the arena we can level up and maybe be a dark horse of the tournament at this point," he said.

FaZe made it through to the BLAST.tv Paris Major in the final match of the group stage in the 2-2 pool. Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen and his men did it in a grueling three-map series that went the distance on the decider, Anubis, and wasn't resolved until the second bout of overtime. Now, the Danish in-game leader and his men have their eyes set on the Accor Arena, where they will play the quarter-finals against one of the best performing teams from the Legends Stage, Vitality or Heroic.

You just made it to the Major's playoffs. You went to the last chance qualifier in the RMR, the last match here in the Legends Stage, you were down 9-15 in the last map against NAVI. As Mauisnake said, you're the 'great procrastinators.' What do you have to say about that?

Yeah, I'm super proud. We have to go all the way back to when we were behind 14-6 against Cloud9 on Mirage. The Major looked really far from that point, but we came back and won that game, I think that was more impressive. Under these circumstances, going to playoffs or not going to playoffs, against a T-sided team on Anubis...

What a performance from the team today, we just believed, we had some rough rounds in the beginning of the CT half... I feel like we have a really good CT side, but it's also playing smart and not too aggressive like we did against 9INE because one double kill could just mean we didn't make playoffs. I think we balanced it really well.

There was a moment there, when you got the tenth round on Anubis, that you said this is going to be the best comeback in history. Tell me about how you tried to motivate the team and get the belief going to pull through in the end.

I was just trying to tell the guys what we can do here is become the first team from a last chance qualifier, the lowest-seeded team coming into the Challengers Stage, going all the way to win the Major, and at some point only what happened in Rio made us have another spot in Europe so we can actually be here. All of these marginals, if we can power up and go into the playoffs with three wins now, we can create a great storyline at the last CS:GO Major.

We all love stories, right? We were the first international team to win the Major and now we're here. I know there's a strange feeling about this team, we don't play our best, but when it's 15-9 we play really well, we play smart, and if we can take that into the arena I always feel like there's 5% more focus from the games. In the arena we can level up and maybe be a dark horse of the tournament at this point.

In the arena there's no more last chances, no more 2-2, it's going to have to be full on from the start. Can you get that going, be fully in it from the start, and pull through without having such doubtful situations as before?

Yeah, for sure. Thank God it's not 11:30 games in the playoffs. As we know, we like to stay up and play retakes and prepare at night. So far the two 11:30 games we got smacked in the first maps, first against BNE and here against NAVI. It took us some time to warm up, but once we got to Mirage we played really well. Overall I'm not worried about the playoffs, it's a completely new scenario.

We're playing one of the two best performing teams right now, either Heroic or Vitality, so I just want to go in there, have fun, and enjoy being in the playoffs of the last CS:GO Major. Who knows, at this point I've seen many things at a Major and I know that if we're there playing our A game, we're not fun to play [against].

You beat NAVI today, and s1mple, one of the best players to ever do it. A big match that a lot of people said should have been an arena match. How did you prepare for it? How did you go into such an important, early morning match, did you have a bit of a sleepless night?

Yeah, I think that I have more sleepless nights at tournaments every time because I'm very excited about the game, nervous, and just lying in bed thinking about how to fake, what move we should write down... The prep has been really, really good because the whole Major has put a lot of pressure on us to perform.

We are shaky in our map pool, so it's not hard to know if people are going to abuse some maps against us. Obviously we put everything into it because we have worked so long to get where we are now that if you just slack one night you're going to lose.

Talking about the game against NAVI, I just took it like a round of 12, like we had a bad seeding in groups and we're now in playoffs because it literally felt like a playoff game, against a team like NAVI that has been playing a lot the whole last year.

Tell me a bit about Anubis, the decider map. It was very entertaining to watch, very exciting, very close... Is the map starting to find its place in the game and can it become one of these very exciting maps more regularly?

For sure, a lot of pro teams have been looking at tier two, I watch a lot of tier two demos because they play the map frequently, every single day, and in tier one you don't get to play too many tournaments so risking Anubis is dangerous. I'm watching a lot of demos and starting to get a good feeling. We also changed some positions, with Twistzz playing mid and me on B, so the map is really exciting.

It allows very aggressive moves, but you also have to respect the late round of the Ts. Plus, if they get mid you have to re-fight areas. It's definitely a very interesting map and I like how it's developing right now. At the beginning it was very T-sided, I remember winning 14-1 against Vitality and then losing 1-14 after, but nowadays I feel like it's more CT-sided as people understand how to play the map.

What can we expect come the arena days. Are we going to get that very motivated, confident FaZe, are you going to go out there to get the crowd on your side?

I have no idea, playing Vitality, the Golden Hornets, I don't know if they're going to help me... But no, obviously, Vitality is a huge crowd favorite, but I don't really care. I just want to go out there and enjoy the atmosphere. If I play Vitality I just want to smile and feel how CS:GO is and enjoy the last Major.

As for confidence, this will give the team a huge boost, knowing that when it mattered the most we delivered. When we were down 15-9 we still delivered, so yeah, definitely a motivated and strong FaZe is coming into the playoffs.