During the final days of DreamHack Masters Malmö, we managed to get a hold of Aleksandar "kassad" Trifunović, the coach of Renegades, to talk about topics such as the departure of nexa, Jayzwalkingz's tenure in the team and the goals for 2017—now that they have completed their roster with NAF.

Approximately 10 days after announcing that David "⁠Jayzwalkingz⁠" Kempner was stepping into the team on a trial basis, Renegades attended DreamHack Masters Malmö. At the event, the predominately Australian team took down Virtus.pro, but couldn't make it out of the groups, falling to Natus Vincere in the decider match.

The team struggled to find the right pieces for the majority of 2017, kassad says

During the playoffs and after Renegades announced that Keith "⁠NAF⁠" Markovic will join their squad, we sat down with Aleksandar "⁠kassad⁠" Trifunović to hear his thought on the offseason, coaching rules, and player transfers.

Let's start with the offseason and your role, what have you been doing for Renegades and how did it go? Considering that a lot of teams were on the lookout for new players, you ended up changing a player in the end... After Atlanta is when we told nexa that he would be benched and that we are going to be on the lookout for a new player. Since then, I think the biggest focus was on the players, that they get some rest from everything that went on in the last six months because it was really tiring. We lost a couple of players, we were constantly playing with stand-ins, looking for the right signing... I think it was important for them to reset and prepare for the new season and to enter it with the right mental state since we were thinking about some changes, some new stuff in the structure... I personally took 6-7 days to totally disconnect, to reset completely, but generally, I was in constant contact with the management, we had meetings... It's sometimes hard to find a good time when you have people in Australia, Europe and North America, the time zones make finding a right time pretty hard. But we had meetings, talked about what we need, who we need, who we could get, what we are going to do in terms of roles when we actually start practicing for the new season and so on... That was more or less it during the off season. We were also in constant contact with the organization to see what they can do for us, how they see the situation and to have them help us find the best solution for the new season together. I'll touch on nexa, a player from your region that came over to a big team, his first professional team, on a new continent and took over a big a tough role. Now that that episode is over, what is your view of the move, do you think that it could've gone a different way? First of all, nexa wasn't our first option. Before nexa, back in January and February, we talked to a lot of different players, and we were close to adding some of them. However, it just wasn't possible to do it, in the middle of the season, because there were large buyouts tied to them, some players didn't want to leave their teams before they give them another chance... There were different problems in the process of adding a new player to replace rickeh. We talked with chrisJ, Hiko, suNny... There was a list of at least 10 players we talked to but it was not possible to get those people. And then we decided to go for new talent, and that ended up being nexa, but he just didn't fit in. What we said to him—and what is really how it is—is that he just wasn't ready to play on that level yet and he wasn't ready for life in the US, in a gaming house. When you combine all that, it just didn't turn out as we hoped it would, so that is more or less it.

nexa, who was leading the team at IEM Sydney, departed the team this summer

Before this tournament, you picked up Jayzwalkingz on trial and started preparing for Malmö. What was the state of the team in these last 10 days, how were you feeling and what did you expect from Malmö? A couple of days before flying to the US we still weren't able to find a real fifth player. We were still searching, negotiating and everything was moving pretty slow. So we needed an option, someone to help us out for the beginning of the season, someone to jump in. David contacted us—and I remember him from the period when he played for Crowns, where he played really well, and he played solid in fnatic Academy as well—, we interviewed him a couple of times, we talked, we explained to him that he would have to play a support role, that he wouldn't AWP and he accepted and wanted to be in that role, he didn't have anything against that. He also wanted to be someone who would close out rounds, so we put him in that position and we gave him a chance. And I really want to say thanks to him, he came in last moment, leaving everything behind and coming to the US, getting to know new people, he communicated in a new language... Up until now all of his teams were Swedish. Everything was new for him but he managed to adapt as much as he could. And from the beginning, it was made clear that he was on a trial period. The feeling while preparing... Those 10 days were really busy, two days after that we had the qualifiers for New York, where we lost to compLexity, but we were all out of it at that point, we weren't warmed up yet. After that we had Pro League starting, the qualifier for ELEAGUE as well, so we didn't have a lot of time to practice. We did as much as we could, we qualified for ELEAGUE and we got here. We didn't do that bad here, but it could've been better, maybe. As soon as your tournament here ended, you announced that NAF would be joining as the new fifth. How did that happen, why NAF and what do you expect from him? Well, NAF is practically the perfect player we need to fill the role we've been missing since February, or at least April when we got Nifty to be the main AWP. We were missing someone who could be a defensive player, who would get some impact frags and play a semi-support role. We will still work on having a better structure regarding roles when we actually start practicing everything after ELEAGUE. I think we have 2-3 weeks in which we don't play anything and we will use that to prepare well, to figure out the roles and the structure, both for the CT and the T side. And I think NAF is the player we need, he is a guy with experience, that knows how to play big matches, he played at the Major and won ELEAGUE. I think he will fit in perfectly. I don't know him as a person, but from what people told me, I think he will fit in perfectly. Nifty is someone you added as an AWPer but after some time he took over the role of the in-game leader. How did that develop, especially considering he is not a player that has a lot of experience in CS:GO? It happened back in Sydney, after we played at IEM as we did—not up to our expectations. One day in Sydney, he called me over to talk and he told me that he wants to in-game lead, and not because he thinks that nexa isn't doing good at the job, but because he really wants to do it and he has some experience from doing it in Selfless, who he lead for 4-5 months. He had good arguments and said some things I liked in Sydney, so we agreed on him taking over the in-game leader role. Of course, we talked with all the players first, had a meeting and everyone agreed. We started then and there were some ups and downs, but for now it's going well, it's important we improve after every match or practice, we are constantly going forward as much as we can.

kassad pacing behind Renegades at DreamHack Masters Las Vegas