We talked to Mathias “MSL” Lauridsen about winning DreamHack Stockholm, switching to AWP, and Danish cs at the major.

Photo Credit: (Dreamhack)

North had a very shaky start to the year, a disappointing Major, a lot of roster changes, but now you seem to be finally back in form as a team with the win at DreamHack Stockholm. How do you feel having overcome the challenges you’ve faced?



It feels amazing. We were struggling for a long time as you said and it’s been really hard. The culmination at the tournament was just amazing and I still can’t believe we did so well and right now it’s just like pure happiness.

You’re now the primary AWPer for North and at Stockholm, showed you could do well with it. Do you think a big part of that is that you’re a brand new AWPer so there’s nothing for teams to study and your style was mostly unknown?



It’s a big upper hand for me for sure, but I think it’s mostly about the fact I take great positions and I am very smart and have always been it, but now I can use it more to my personal level than I could before. It feels really good to me.

Do you think that the likes of device and s1mple will be more prepared for you as you go through the tournament? Do you think you can keep up that same level of impact with the AWP as you had at Stockholm?

Of course, I need to begin to think that people will watch my demos and prepare for me. I think everyone underestimated me, but I will take it step-by-step, it’s still the learning phase and I need to learn a lot before I can even be consistent with the AWP. I’m just looking forward to what the future holds.

Niko was only brought in recently but you managed to win an event with him, as you did with mixwell, how has he been as a teammate so far and has he gelled in the roster?

We are in a really good place and niko is an amazing guy, making a lot of jokes, making the atmosphere within the team really nice. It’s awesome to have him on board.

You have former teammates in OpTic and Astralis are still your closest Danish rivals, are you hoping to face them in this stage?

It could be fun to face both of the Danish teams. It’s always a really intense game and there’s a lot of pride on the line when we face Danish teams. They would be fun matches to play.

There are three strong Danish teams here in the New Challenger Stage, even if OpTic hasn’t performed lately, while Heroic impressed in Stockholm and there is rising talent in teams like Fragsters. What do you think is giving Danish teams and players such an edge right now?

I think we have a lot of good in-game leaders in Denmark who have taught the upcoming players a lot of basics in the game and I think that has made the scene grow and grow, better and better each year. It’s mostly down to having. maybe, five to eight very smart players in Denmark who have taught the youngsters up.

Anything you’d like to say to your fans?



I’m just happy for the support that we have gotten before and after the victory from our loyal fans.

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