The ELEAGUE Invitational kicks off Friday with four Counter-Strike: Global Offensive teams attending in another tune-up for the IEM Katowice Major.

The ELEAGUE CS:GO Invitational 2019 teams



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Watch the action live ➡️ https://t.co/K0YUEmmFSV pic.twitter.com/Pvy7oWdaqu — ELEAGUE (@ELEAGUETV) January 10, 2019

​​The four teams attending are FaZe Clan, Cloud9, compLexity and BIG. Ahead of the tournament, representatives from FaZe, Cloud9 and compLexity joined assembled members of the media for a conference call. Here are the highlights from the call.





​"NiKo is still in-game leader. With bringing in AdreN, compared to karrigan, he's a really different kind of player. So, we have to adjust, try to work around him." - Havard "Rain" Nygaard said in regards to who's calling in-game for FaZe Clan.





"The most important thing is that he brought discipline. He brings something we needed and we needed it need much, much earliler than we got it." - Ladislav "GuardiaN" Kovacs said when asked about Janko "YNk" Paunovic joining the team as coach.





"It's fun for me to just be playing again. It's cool to have that rapport with a teammate already. It's hard to count iBUYPOWER as a first event back. Now we have another shot to get momentum. Just looking forward to playing some best-of-threes here." - Jordan "n0thing" Gilbert commented on returning to a professional team and playing with Shahzeeb "ShahZaM" Khan again.





"As a first event, we were kinda hoping for more regardless of the stuff that happened. I think we took away quite a bit from the two maps we played and had some productive talks." - ShahZaM said on what compLexity took away from iBUYPOWER Masters IV.





"It's definitely fun to be back in here and I'm not really forcing any decision on myself until after the Major, so yeah you never know. It's already pulling me in more than I thought it would..." - n0thing on plans for after the IEM Katowice Major.





"I think overall there's a lot more experience on the team now. I think before we had a lot of hesitation in the team. It's a matter of molding Zellsis into the player we want him to be, and I think he can do that." - Will "RUSH" Wierzba responded when asked to compare the team environment from the FACEIT London Major to the Katowice Major.





"I think to be honest during the FACEIT Major we had kind of a lucky run in terms of the format and our map pool. We didn't have a really good map pool at all and it really hurt us even at other tournaments. I think that we have a lot more experience on this roster, so people will be more comfortable playing on these further stages of the tournament." - ShahZaM on compLexity's run at the FACEIT Major compared to trying to defend the team's Legend status this time around.





The ELEAGUE Invitational takes place Jan. 25-27 at the ELEAGUE Arena in Atlanta. Fans can watch the event on Twitch, ​ELEAGUE's website or ​B/R Live.





Photo courtesy of ELEAGUE/Turner Sports