As an in-game leader, Finn "karrigan" Andersen is known for being able to come into almost any team and find a way to effectively use their personnel. From TSM, to all the different iterations of FaZe, and now Mousesports, he has proven to be one of the most flexible callers in the scene.





At Sydney, his new team with up-and-comers Özgür "woxic" Eker and David "frozen" Čerňanský managed to make it into the playoffs, grinding through three series in the lower-bracket. Although they fell to MiBR in the quarterfinals, Mousesports managed to dispel any fears around inexperience in their stars or lack of cohesion in their structure.





Upcomer talked to Karrigan about his past as a caller, how he applies it to the new team and what he learned in Sydney.





Throughout your career you've taken command of many very different lineups, each with a unique mix of players. How does coming into this mouz roster compare to other entrances into teams?





Karrigan: I'd say I have two different big teams. Back then, TSM was completely different. They had a good core of players, they had roles set. So when I came into that lineup I was pushing them even further than they were, and then when gla1ve came in, he pushed them all the way to the top.





Going into FaZe it was completely different than what I was used to in Astralis. They had big names but they weren't working together as a team, they trusted me building the team, the FaZe organization.





Now, it's different again. It's completely young players who haven't proven themselves. They've been promising, w0xic and frozen, but not totally proven. It's been different but I've been ready to do it with my experience in the past teams. The dynamic is really good in this team, it's something we keep improving on everyday.









What have you had to change in your leadership style between FaZe and this team?





In FaZe I wasn't correcting mistakes too much because I believed the team would nine out of ten times play the situation right with all their experience they have, being the best players in the world. They would know when they did a mistake, if they played it wrong or right. So I didn't correct mistakes so much, especially with the lineup we had in the end. It was really tough.





Here though, I'm really vocal when it comes to mistakes and how I want them to play within the system, tactics, when they should or shouldn't push. So I have the most say in how I mould these players to play within my system that I'm trying to structure. So that's the big difference.

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Does ChrisJ come into the equation helping to structure the system, in this sense?





Yeah, exactly right. When I looked at the lineup, what opportunity we had. I felt that ChrisJ was a really important piece to the lineup. I feel that every player we have is an important piece into the lineup. He has to be the secondary caller in these situations where I need him to if we are far behind and he can see gaps.





Me and Chris are never really in the pack together. I have him as a type of hybrid-lurk, aggressive lurk as well. He's doing what I need him to do in the team, much like what Olofm was doing in FaZe, these not bad roles, but not great roles, what is needed within the round.





Continuing down this line of questioning with mouz's system, how do you see the identity of this roster? Are you leaning to a looser style of play, more structured, or somewhere in-between?





Yes, so, what is important to my style is I don't to be full loose but I never want to be full structure. When you have a team with players who want to peek, who believe they're better than other players, you need to give them space to play their aggressive style.





W0xic comes to mind as someone you never really want to limit. If he says “Finn I want to peek B” I build around his peek and whether we go or don't go. We have some good strats though, some good structure to fall back in if someone is having a bad game. We need to have something to rely on. What I've always wanted is a system that's balance in that way so you can play each type of style depending on who you face.





So if you want to play structure you shouldn't play against Astralis, because you can't beat them at their own game. Basically you have to beat them with another game they have a hard time countering, and that's the loose style you often saw in Astralis versus FaZe.





Moving forwards, what are the big takeaways for your team after having your first taste of a big stage?





I mean, we rewatched the game today as a team and one of our main focuses was the clutch rounds. We lose to the team who is probably the second best team in the world in terms of clutching, besides Astralis. Obviously they're going to nine out of ten times win those clutches, which they did. So that's something we're going to work on in the future.





The problem is though, you can't really work on stuff like this in practice because it's not really the same as sitting in a high-pressure situation, 14-14. It's practice, people are going to play differently. So we just have to make sure we fix those mistakes and learn from them. I only take good things from the match yesterday. We should have won Mirage, that's the feeling we have. Overpass was always going to be a tough game.





Our map pool isn't strong enough to beat a team like MiBR yet over all six maps.