RobbaN: "We've been missing [taking] more days off a bit"

The Swedish coach touched on FaZe's struggles against Evil Geniuses.

FaZe came into IEM Dallas soon after a lackluster Paris Major performance, and they barely squeaked by Evil Geniuses in their opening match of the North American tournament. The European combine needed overtime to close out the game against a team ranked more than 50 places below them in the world ranking but did just enough to move on in the upper bracket.

HLTV sat down with Robert "⁠RobbaN⁠" Dahlström after their Dallas opener and talked about the struggles with getting up to speed, the fact they always seem to play in incredibly close games, and their expectations for the rest of the season.

A win over EG, probably a little closer than you expected?

For sure. I mean not to take anything away from them, they played some good rounds, but EG is a team that we should beat. They won both pistols; it's not an excuse, but I think we were not 100% today and we have to grow every game from here and play better and better.

You had match point for a while and it ended up going to overtime, what was going wrong?

We had the opportunity, I think we played perfect but we just didn't get the kills. We had a 5vs3 one of the rounds, we had a double AWP setup on B and three guys and we couldn't win that round. I think we played it well, but in the end we just didn't win the rounds.

Something karrigan said at the Major was there was a "strange feeling" about this team, that you don't play well unless it's close sometimes. A similar scenario here, or what are you noticing about that from behind the team?

There's definitely something behind that. I agree that we always step up when we really have to. It's good in one way, but at the same time we need to be able to win these games, to be able to reach that point in playoffs when it's quarter-finals and stuff. But it's definitely true, I think we just have to grow into the games a bit. Today was a bit off in comms, and we just have to improve on that.

That was something rain, ropz, others were talking about at the Major, communication has continued to be an issue. What are you doing behind the team to help mitigate that?

Of course communication is the most important thing in Counter-Strike, and everyone knows that. It's not like we have bad comms, but some days we have worse comms. I just want to make sure that everyone is actually doing the basics in the comms, because sometimes we slack in the comms a little bit, and maybe not everyone is saying everything they have to say.

In the end that's what's important, the teammate needs to know which angle he has, if they have your back, the basics in communication, and that is something we're lacking sometimes. It comes down to the day and on some players.

Another thing that was mentioned [by karrigan] was that you have a shaky map pool, is that tied to the comms or is it a separate issue that stacks on top of that?

I don't think we have a shaky map pool. We have been trying some stuff out, we swapped on Inferno and swapped some positions on Anubis as well. But I think our map pool is very strong, I don't think we have lost to the maps, it's always been a different reason so I believe our map pool is still strong.

Twistzz had a good performance here, something he was struggling with at the Major. Was there a conversation that happened after that event, or what has resulted in this bounce back?

I don't think he has been playing bad, I don't think he's in a slump or anything like that, I think it's more in his own head sometimes. Russ is an amazing player and he always steps up for this team, he's been doing it many, many times.

Today he played amazing and I'm sure he's going to continue that way. He's just a player that needs to be fully confident all the time, and sometimes when you're losing as a team, it also loses a bit of confident for the player.

The Major was obviously a huge loss for the team given the expectations, so what was the conversation coming out of that and before you came into Dallas?

Obviously we were struggling a lot. We were fighting for every game, we felt like we had to come back and we were actually putting everything we had into these games. It was very close games all of the time and we had to do comebacks, and of course in the end I believe that we had a good chance to win 2-0 against Heroic, we definitely had the chance on Nuke.

So I don't want to overthink anything, what we have to do is stay motivated and keep working hard, take these two events now, and then we have summer break. That's been something we have been missing a bit sometimes, to take more days off, so now a vacation and then we'll see what happens with CS2.

Have you had much of a chance to play retakes here yet?

Here, no unfortunately [smiling]. But we're definitely going to try to keep the grind on.

You're in the upper bracket semi-final, so a chance to qualify directly for the playoffs. How are you feeling going into that?

It's a good chance. I don't know who we're going to play yet, but it would be amazing to secure the position. I just want to play in the arena here, it would be amazing.