​After advancing to the ELEAGUE Premier playoffs with a 2-0 sweep over Team Liquid, DBLTAP's Max Mallow sat down with Astralis' coach, Danny "zonic" Sorenson to talk about the team's strong group stage performance, what's led to the team's journey back to the top of ​Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and Emil "Magisk" Reif's integration to the team.

Max Mallow: You guys advance from Group A in the winner's match. How important was it for Astralis to come out and have a strong group stage performance after finishing 3/4th at ESL One Cologne?





Danny "zonic" Sorenson: For us, it's always important to have a good start to have not that many obstacles because it's a long tournament and we're not going to speculate who we'd meet because we have FaZe Clan and Natus Vincere on the other side. Whoever we're gonna face from the other group, it's going to be really tough. It was about showing our "A" game, and I'm really proud of the guys and how we played because it is late in the season and I can definitely see that people, myself included, need some vacationing.





MM: A big part of Astralis' return to the top of CS:GO was innovation, double grenades in particular. You guys have star players on the team, there's no doubt about that, but it feels like the core focus on Astralis is teamwork. As the coach, do you feel the same way or is the innovation the key factor?





DS: I think it's a mixture several things. Obviously, the nades are one thing, but it's also the way that we communicate and practice. We don't just sit on a server and then just start practicing against different teams. We actually talk a lot about our practice, we spend a lot of hours on the server, and then we have different roles on the team. For example, when someone dies in a round, they have an additional responsibility. Whenever a guy on my team dies, he can't just sit and rest because he still has a job to do. So, again, I think it's a mixture of several things especially us analyzing our practice matches and the tournaments we play in.





MM: Back when Kjaerbye was on the team, you were notably behind him a lot on stage keeping him hyped up and showing him support. Now, with Magisk, do you feel like you don't have to put that much emphasis on keeping him level headed? Or do you just spread attention evenly?





DS: I think I equally go behind each player. Sometimes, if someone's having a bad match, he needs a little more of my attention. I talk a lot with the players between maps too. For example, I talked with dupreeh after the first map against Cloud9 letting him know that he's doing a good job even though it might not show on the scoreboard. That ties back to the whole everyone has a responsibility on the team point I mentioned. Emil is really emotional and a really passionate guy so he's actually helping me find out more about the rest of the team. It's nice to have a guy who's pumped up and wants to win for any prize and I'm happy to have him on the team."





MM: Looking back on the year so far, how do you feel Magisk has meshed into the Astralis family?





DS: Even though I love Emil and think he's a perfect fit for the team, you also have to be realistic in the sense that we're doing quite well right now, but at some point we're going to struggle and have our downtime. My job is to ensure that downtime is as short as possible. Once that point comes, we'll face some issues. Right now, we don't have any problems with any of the players and everything is going very well. We extremely work on being open minded and talking about whatever issues we might have with each other. We call it a debrief. We do it on a regular basis where people can share their minds about what they think about each other both in and out of the game. It's really important to me that the players are honest and respectful toward each other and Emil has fit in perfectly in that sense.





MM: Back when Magisk was on Dignitas and North, what did you see out of him as a player that made him stand out and what he's shown you?





DS: I saw him at the ELEAGUE Atlanta Major when we played against Virtus.pro in the final. I knew at that time, if not already, that he was going to be a really good player and a huge talent. I also heard some of the rumors about him being toxic and being a good fit for North on a social basis back then. I had a talk with Emil before we signed him and he was a cool guy. I've also talked with him at previous tournaments during breakfast or whatever. I've always had a good impression of Emil and he's a really funny guy. For us to just welcome him and showing him the respect that he deserves, I'm pretty sure it's gone both ways so far. We'll definitely have our problems just like any other team but Emil is perfect right now.





MM: Yeah, and when those times come, you'll have to be the dad of the team and tell them to stop arguing.





DS: Yeah, exactly. That goes for any of the players. Sometimes I need to be the coach, other times I'm going to be the dad. Telling them what to do and what not to do, how to sit and how to eat at restaurants and stuff like that that.



Make sure to tune in on Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET across Twitch.tv/eleaguetv, live.eleague.com or live.bleacherreport.com for more ELEAGUE action. Team Liquid faces off against Made in Brazil followed by a match between Fnatic and mousesports.





This interview was edited for clarity

Photo courtesy of Adela Sznajder/DreamHack