After surviving their elimination match at the ECS Season 5 Finals, we talked to fnatic's new in-game leader Richard "⁠Xizt⁠" Landström about his time in FaZe and his thoughts on the recent Swedish shuffle.

On the second day of the London event, fnatic eliminated Cloud9 in a close-fought best-of-three that went the distance. They now move on to play Liquid for a chance to reach the playoffs on Sunday.

This is the Swedish side's first LAN in over a month, and the first event with Xizt in the driver's seat after he was brought on recently in place of Jonas "⁠Lekr0⁠" Olofsson, who went on replace William "⁠draken⁠" Sundin in NiP.

Xizt believes several Swedish players aren't in the right roles

We sat down with the experienced Swede to quiz him on his new role and what he thinks of the consequences of the aforementioned shuffle:

Last time we talked to you, you said your goal was to return to an IGL role. What's it like for you, being back as captain?

It feels good. I obviously have some really great players with me, they communicate very well and make my job very easy. And I think we have the same understanding of the game, so being on the same page as the players is just great. It's a bit stressful in some situations and we're trying to play a bit slower and use our experience, because we have so much experience between us. If we just slow things down I think we're gonna be more succesful.

In that same interview, you said that one of the problems at the beginning of your run as a stand in for FaZe was communicating, because you were used to speaking Swedish. So what's it like to come back to that?

It was a bit weird hearing everything in Swedish again, but I think it just makes everything much easier. We had some problems in FaZe with the communication sometimes, especially in stressful situations. In tight situations, there was some misunderstandings. When things got close at the end of maps, someone might misunderstand a call or something, which very easily happens when you're speaking English.

You've been talking about wanting to learn from karrigan while you were on the team. What do you think you learned?

It's actually funny, I think karrigan actually learned from me in the beginning of 1.6 when I was captain of that team (fnatic 2012). The most important thing for me in FaZe was just that I could just relax and play, and not having to call was good for me as a player, just learning what it's like from that perspective. Of course, I learned some strats and other stuff from him, but I have my own calling style I would say.

So, right now we're just past a bigger Swedish shuffle, and there's been some debate about what's going on, who's really going where, what's gonna end up with players like draken and Lekr0 after they were released from NiP and your new team. How do you feel being the one who's coming out on top of all of this?

I think the Swedish scene is a bit weird right now. All the shuffles are a bit weird. I don't think the right players have the right roles. If you look at Dennis, he's probably the best entry fragger in Sweden right now and I think they should unleash him more. There are just a lot of players in weird roles.

Would you say that also goes for your own team? You came in, Lekr0 was released, and now Golden has been moved to entry fragger. Is that also part of the weirdness of Sweden right now?