

pita (left) and Maikelele (right) at Copenhagen Games 2014.

"wenton received an offer from Fnatic, and then NiP asked me if I wanted to play for a couple of tournaments, which I agreed to. The team kept playing with some other players while we were gone, but I'm not sure who they played with", Maikelele shares in a talk with Fragbite.

"Heroic is undoubtedly the strongest team in the tournament"

"We feel solid in my opinion. I guess it would have been nice with a little more practice, but in the end this is the perfect practice. I hope we can get a couple of nice days with some Counter-Strike, and hopefully we feel that sweet 'vibe' so that we can deliver."

"Heroic is undoubtedly the strongest team in the tournament. It's a little scary to face them in the first match, but also good. They will come in cold, as will we, and I feel like that could be beneficial to us. Our players are hungry and eager to show themselves, and this is a perfect opportunity for that.



Maikelele is used to handle criticism. Heck, he even had a team called "hatersG0nnahate" at one point.

"I have gotten hate about being toxic for a long time. I guess that's just something people write when they don't have anything else to write about me. The only sad thing is that I've never had team mates who defend me, especially since I've done so much for my own team mates in the past."

"I hope we can deliver."

On the 22nd of December, the Swedish Counter-Strike scene was handed an early Christmas gift as the team qwerty saw the light of day for the first time. The team, led by Mikail "Maikelele" Bill and Faruk "pita" Pita, will be playing their debut at DreamHack ASTRO Open Leipzig 2017 starting tomorrow. I wanted to figure out what we could expect from this untested squad, so we had to go all the way back to the beginning.It might come as a surprise to learn that the construction of this team started in the beginning of last year, at MLG Columbus. That's where Maikelele played his last tournament with FaZe Clan and found out that Pita, who was the coach (and temporary stand-in) for Counter Logic Gaming at the time, was moving back to Sweden. Bill had strived to play for a Swedish-speaking team for quite some time, and with Pita's homecoming, both of them knew that they wanted to start something together.They immediately started scouting for players, and after some time they found that John "wenton" Eriksson, Fredrik "slap" Junbrant and Simon "atter" Atterstam were the perfect candidates. The team actually started playing together during the summer, but some things came in the way, and the project was put on hold. At least for Maikelele and wenton.Maikelele went on to win the StarLadder i-League StarSeries Season 2 finals with NiP, the single greatest victory of his career in terms of prize money, but it was still a temporary gig. As soon as Jacob "pyth" Mourujärvi, who was absent due to a wrist injury, was fit for fight, Maikelele went back to the qwerty project. The very same week, Eriksson had lost his spot in Fnatic to Joakim "disco doplan" Gidetun, and the pieces fell together with an unlikely timing. The players continued where they left off, and soon they announced qwerty's existence to the world.Here we are today, and in less than 24 hours qwerty will be playing their first official tournament together. Since the team has only existed for a couple of weeks officially, they haven't had too much time to practice. However, the hours they have put down has been very effective much thanks to Pita's experience as both a coach and in game leader. Although he would have enjoyed some more practice, Bill thinks the Leipzig event is a perfect first test for the team. He compares the event to Swedish LANs back in the day, where lower tier teams would duke it out, which suits them.Looking at the participant's list, no team really stands out on paper. One might think FlipSid3, who are Major Legends, would be favorites to grab the big W, but Maikelele seems to have more respect for the Danish-Swedish team Heroic, where his old friend Andreas "MODDII" Fridh plays.Having played for NiP Gaming not only once, but for two parts of his career, Bill is used to being watched and to handle pressure. However, he doesn't think that this team is under any particular pressure, at least not more than he is as a player. He still feels like he has a lot to prove, especially since people seem to think he's become a worse player in the past years. "I'm not usually affected by that kind of pressure", he says, "more than the fact that I want to prove to myself what I'm capable of on the server".Shortly after the statement mentioned above, Maikelele seems reminded of another kind of pressure — dealing with criticism. That's usually a side effect to being successful and well-known, and he's used to being both loved and hated. Though he feels that he's gotten very little support from his previous team mates.But qwerty is a new chapter with blank pages in Bill's book of Counter-Strike achievements, and the first page will be written tomorrow starting 14:00 CET. Before leaving for Leipzig, Maikelele also mentioned that he doesn't think his recent time with NiP Gaming affects the team at all, but that his win at StarSeries might bring some motivation and ease to them. Lastly, he finishes with five words that I think most fans of Bill and qwerty are thinking.