



Photo Credit: Joao Ferreira, Dreamhack





Coming off a top 4 finish at ICE Challenge 2020 piethrouer checked in with Maden of GODSENT on his thoughts about joining this exciting international roster.





Before playing for SMASH and GODSENT you were playing for Bluejays. What has the transition been like from a national team to an international team?





Yes, before GODSENT I had been playing for BlueJays. It wasn't that hard of a problem for me, since I played a lot of pugs/games while talking English and I am used to it basically. At beginning it was a bit hard because of the callouts but everything else was fine.





Everyone on this GODSENT lineup has played in at least 1 major before, what’s it like playing with such a large group of veteran players around you?





It's great having such experienced players around you, I learn something new every day from them and I always had pleasure playing with them. They know the game well and I am trying to pick as many good things from them as possible.





Devilwalk as the coach has even been to the highest level and won a major, has he helped you a lot to grow as a player in your time on SMASH/GODSENT?





Devilwalk helps me and everyone in the team so much, he instantly tells what have you been doing bad and what should you work on. In these few months while I was in GODSENT I got a lot of experience just from listening to his ideas and fixes.





You guys recently beat Tricked to win WePlay Forge of Masters Season 2, this being your first LAN tournament win. What was the feeling for you, and also throughout the team after this?





This was our first LAN tournament in this lineup but not my first international one. I played a few lower tier LANs in Greece and Poland. I didn't expect us coming into the first LAN, winning it with 0 maps lost and me being the top-rated player. I personally felt great after this and it gave me a lot of confidence and good faith in the team! All the teammates were super happy how I handled the first bigger LAN with the audience, I was not stressed at all.





Recently at the ICE Challenge 2020 you placed top 4 eventually losing to NAVI but with extremely close matches and even taking maps off of them. How much has this helped you confidence-wise in your play?





We showed good results in this ICE Challenge LAN beating ENCE, Virtus Pro, and losing to NAVI, and it was super close, especially the first game in the group stage. The main part is that we learned a lot from the loss from them. We expected that we were gonna play well since we had 2 weeks of bootcamp before this and we prepared well. But this tournament definitely helped us keep the good mood and grinding even harder for upcoming tournaments.





The Major closed qualifier is coming up, your teammates almost qualified to the major last time as NoChance, how confident do you feel that you can make the minor and then also the major?





We are super confident coming up into this Minor closed qualifier, we're gonna play it from bootcamp. We are prepared well and we know our strengths and we are gonna focus on our gameplay. I don't know our opponents yet but I feel like we can beat everyone and get into that Minor firstly.





Within the team, you guys all seem to be pretty expressive. What is the team environment like? Do you try to hype each other up a lot?





All of us are kinda expressive and emotional. We are hyping each other a lot, especially when we play LAN tournaments and you have nothing to lose. Sometimes our problem is when we lose few rounds with some stupid mistakes we get a bit tilted and it can affect our gameplay until the end of the map, but mostly we reset instantly after it happens and we try our best not to be emotional. Team energy is great , we talk openly and we fix everything together.





Of recent there has been a lot of Serbian players getting pulled up to international rosters with you, Nexa, and huNter the most notable. What are your thoughts on the Serbian scene right now and who are some other players to look out for?





If we talk about Serbian scene, there are few players that individually stepped up, as you mention Nexa, huNter and few others.. But there are not a lot of teams, only one team that is grinding and making great results recently is Juggernauts. They are all great players and people should keep an eye on dEE (AWPer) and DiMKE great rifler.





The core is currently at #18 on the HLTV rankings which is the highest since forming. What are the team's goals, and also a personal goal you have for yourself?





We made it into top 18 in 4 months which is a great result, and we didn't expect that things were gonna move that fast. Our main goal is that we are gonna be a stable top 20-30 team and to attend tier 1 LANs. I don't have a personal goal for this year, I am just doing my best individually, to help the team as well and things will go in the right way hopefully.





GODSENT will compete in the upcoming ESL One Rio Europe Minor Closed Qualifier starting on March 7