We caught up with Christopher "⁠GeT_RiGhT⁠" Alesund during the opening day of BLAST Pro Series Lisbon and picked his brain on NiP's improvements in recent months and his personal struggles throughout the year.

The Swedish team, currently ranked seventh in the world, will be hoping to end the year on a high and continue their recent encouraging LAN form after finishing in second place at the previous BLAST Pro Series event, in Copenhagen, and third-fourth at the ECS Season 6 Finals.

GeT_RiGhT is confident that NiP will continue to improve in 2019

Read on as GeT_RiGhT discusses the ups and downs for NiP in 2018, the team's goals for 2019, and his individual form when compared to previous years.

Your team has not been to as many events as some others here, but looking at the results, which I guess is the most important thing, they have been quite good, actually. You had a second place at BLAST and third-fourth place at ECS. Are you finally reaching a level you're happy with?

Looking at the whole year, if you were to summarise it, I think it has been an O.K. year. Not the best, not something we had hoped for. We'd also like to grab a big title, so we hope we can do it this weekend. It's not the end of the world if we don't because we would rather play stable and get better and better, and we've been feeling it ever since Jonas [Lekr0] joined the team that we've been becoming much, much better. We have bombed once or twice, but it happens to everyone, so it's not like everyone is too strong or anything like that. I think in general we're O.K. with it. We're not satisfied with it, we're not happy with it, but you have to look at the harsh truth, and the harsh truth is saying that we don't have a big win, but, looking at how the year has gone and the problems we've had and all of the situations that have happened, I think it has been O.K. Still, I'm not happy with it, I don't think anyone is happy with it, but it is what it is.

I think it has been an O.K. year. We would like to grab a big title, so we hope can we do it this weekend, but it is not the end of the world if we do not win Christopher "⁠GeT_RiGhT⁠" Alesund

Was it hard for you to miss the ESL Pro League Finals and IEM Chicago, since those were the biggest events of the last two months of the year?

We were a bit disappointed that we didn't get invited to Chicago, mostly because they had removed Oakland, which we had won twice in a row, two years straight. We thought that since they removed it, we would get invited to Chicago as the reigning champions in a way. It's a new tournament, so it's understandable, but we thought that we would at least get an invite because we had just started to become much better than we were before. So we were a little bit disappointed about not getting it and we didn't want to play the online qualifier, we declined it.

As a statement?

No, it was more like we wanted to focus on other things. The team was really, really new, and since we had to put in time and practice, we thought that if they'd give us an invite we would go, but if they don't, then it's nothing to think about. It was a bit sad and boring because I think a lot of people wanted to attend the tournament, but we don't think about it that much. EPL, however, that was a strange period if you ask us...

For many teams, yeah... like FaZe, for example.

We played so many online games, we all faced each other, but I think for us it was even worse because we got to the relegation and eventually got to keep the spot, but it was a very strange thing. It was very weird. We didn't even know until the last second that we still had our spot. So it was kind of an out-of-the-blue thing, but looking through the online stage I think we weren't really worried about the season, to be honest. We thought that it was annoying to lose a lot of games in a row, especially against teams we shouldn't probably lose to. Also, being stomped by a lot of teams was shocking because we had started playing very well on LAN and stuff...

We weren't really giving it a big consideration, we didn't think about it too much, but we were, of course, disappointed not to qualify, and disappointed to not even be safe. We've seen many teams fail before, so we didn't think too much about it. We were just happy to make it to one of the two finals of ECS/EPL, so we were happy we qualified and we played pretty decent CS, so we're happy with that, but it would have been perfect to play in Odense and see if we would have played much better than before.

GeT_RiGhT praised pita for helping him to overcome all the negativity

Your team tends to do very well at BLAST events. You have a third-place finish and a second-place finish. What are your expectations going into this event? Do you see yourselves as one of the favorites?

I don't do any predictions. I'd rather not talk about any of that stuff, in general, but I'd say like we feel confident going into these tournaments, what we're heading into. We're happy with them giving us a great chance, an opportunity to play these show matches or however this system works. I don't know, it fits us pretty well, but I don't see us as favorites because all of the teams here are very good. We don't really expect anything special, we just want to play our game, be happy with the results, and end the year on a good note, in a way, so whatever we head into, we head into, and we're looking forward to the next season. I think everyone just wants to start grinding, in a way, again, because there's a break coming up. I think everyone is already pumped to start a new season. This is going to be a nice finish for the year and hopefully with a good result. We'll see.

You are now ranked seventh in the world. What are your goals for 2019?

We can become much better than we are right now. We are good right now, but we are not very good. We are not at that stage where we can win a couple of tournaments. We are one of those teams considered a dark horse...

Mostly because you did not attend some tournaments, then when you showed up again you were getting some good results. I guess that is what 2018 has been mostly about for you, right?

Yes, I agree with you to some extent. I had not really thought about it that much. We just want to become much better. We have some small problems, nothing big that cannot be solved or that will force us to do something special, we know what we need to work on, we are happy to go into the new year working harder and becoming much better than we are right now. We are happy to the point that we know we can play well, but we want to know that when we face good teams that we can beat them, that we are 100% confident about beating them and playing our own game, because I see us having a little bit of a struggle with our own mindset, but I think this is something that will only get better. Everyone is super eager and super confident for next year. I cannot say that we will win a lot of tournaments or anything like that because I always feel that will backfire. I am open-minded, I just want to make us win a big one again.

Of course I would love to play better in general, and that is what I am striving to do. For the first six, seven months [of 2018] it was not good enough, and I am honest with it, I know myself. I was not happy with it Christopher "⁠GeT_RiGhT⁠" Alesund

Looking at the stats, this has been your worst year individually. Has it been harder for you, as the years go by, to stay in form?