











I spoke with tabseN ahead of the Faceit Major Legend stage. tabseN discusses BIG’s struggles in the challenger stage, the impact of gob b and the development of smooya.





Let’s start with the challenger stage, you had quite a tough run, playing all the way to day 5, did you expect it to be so difficult?





Honestly, I didn't expect it to be that difficult, not easy, but I expected to go through without any problems. After the first two games, we pressed ourselves a lot and had to break the barrier. After that we had a talk, and after the talk it went perfectly fine.





What do you think caused you guys to struggle in these games, what were you lacking?





We were lacking, I think a little bit of communication and also a little bit of confidence because when we played Vega for example we made a lot of stupid mistakes which we shouldn't have made and also they caught us off guard, which is their style and we knew that. Other than that I think we made a lot of mistakes with concentration problems, we were not fully in the games, we weren't focused at all and we got punished by that.





So coming in to the legend stage now what are your expectations now that you’ve qualified?





Yeah my expectations are very high, we can go 3-0 in my opinion. We are a very strong team, teams need to be careful about us and I expect them to prepare a lot for us.





It seems a that when players play under gob b, they play their career best form. Can you tell us how he helps his players succeed and play at top form?





Yeah definitely, gob b is watching a lot of the players and tries to make the best out of them. He tries to use them very well and can see the strengths of a player and tries to keep improving them all the time.





There has been a lot of focus on smooya recently, particularly due to it being a UK major, can you talk to us about how he has developed so far since joining the team?





His development has been going very well I would say, because in the beginning it was very rough, also because of the communication, we talked a lot of German and he felt in a bad mood which is understandable and so we tried to speak way more English and which was the case which is why he is feeling way more comfortable right now. He has a huge character and is a big part of our team, he is also a really funny guy!





So lastly, what would be considered a successful tournament for you and the team?





Obviously top 8 is a success for us but in my opinion a successful run at this tournament would be semi final and I’m pretty sure we can reach it.