Foto: Fragbite

Team SoloMid were for the longest time famous for their inherent ways to choke while on the big stages.

After winning three offline events in a short period of time, the danish squad has seemingly overcome that obstacle, but according to Peter ”dupreeh” Rothmann they still have one more obstacle to climb before claiming the top spot in the world.

– We still need to win a major. Before we do that, Fnatic should be considered the best team, he says after the victory over their rivals in Stockholm.

Peter ’dupreeh’ Rothmann alongside his comrades in Team SoloMid has become a force to be reckoned with in the CS:GO professional scene. After a few disastrous games in playoffs throughout the years, the team has grown into a clutch team winning several titles the last couple of weeks.

As the confetti fell after the Danish team’s hard fought victory over Fnatic in the finals of Fragbite Masters, and TSM began the celebrations, dupreeh offered his sober opinion on the latest success and their position in the hierarchy at the top of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

– I’m pretty sure it is all a mental aspect. I don’t really know what made us so much stronger lately, but I think we just got over ’the hump’. We have faced Ninjas in Pyjamas so many times, and we lost to them so many times that you could say that they became our kryptonite. Every time we got knocked out we couldn’t really figure out what we did wrong, other than we made some bad in-game calls.

– But as soon as we started winning, people in our squad started to believe more in themselves. We started to think ’hey, it is actually possible for us to win these games’.

”When you’re winning every call seems to be right”

In recent months, the Danish team has been winning consistently against the best organizations out there. As this article is written, Team SoloMid tops the European standings in the ESL ESEA Pro Leage, ahead of Fnatic.

– We’ve always been really good online, but now that is all changed. We destroy other teams on LAN, but lose way to many ’easy’ games online.

– Nicolai ”device” Reedtz said something smart, he said that whenever you are winning – every call seems to be right. When you are loosing, you are questioning everything. Especially on LAN, momentum is so extremely important.

When you were playing Cobblestone during the finals of Fragbite Masters, you guys were having a blast in front of the screen – laughing and cheering?

– We are always like that. We do that all the time. We are one of those teams that if things are going good for us, we keep the chemistry high in the team, making fun of each other. We knew that Cobblestone was Fnatic’s go to map when they want to face someone on a map they probably haven’t practiced. And, though we have put some time on it, we are not good on it.

So you had not prepared specifically on that map anticipating Fnatic to pick against you?

– We obviously know the set smokes and such, but if a team locks us down, we are completely clueless on that map.

”Six teams in Europe are really good right now”

During Katowice, Xyp9x told us as a reply on the question regarding Cloud9:s VODs in terms of their communication – that within your squad, the coms are pretty crappy as well. Has that changed at all and if so, how?

– One of the problems we have in our team, and I don’t really know how it is in the other top teams, is that when there’s a big firefight with grenades flying all over the place we don’t give the complete and accurate call out. We try, of course, but you are so focused on killing the enemy your brain just says ’I need to kill these guys’. What we are good at, and have become much better at, is to give good calls when we are dead.

– The one thing we have been working on is not to get too hyped. If you are to in to it, you’ll just sit there screaming and repeat your callout three times. What happens is that if someone is too hyped up, he will also get the others way more hyped in situations when you need to be calm.

With only a few months before the next major, do you see yourself above Fnatic at this point and who will be your main opponents when ESL Cologne rolls around?

– The only reason I’d put Fnatic above us is the fact that they have won a major. I also think that it will stay that way until we prove that we can win a major. We haven’t played against EnvyUs on LAN yet, the last time we played them they were still called LDLC. If you ranked the top teams, we’d be sharing the second place with them.

– We have six teams in Europe right now who are really, really good.