Markus "Kjaerbye" Kjærbye: "I’m just trying to stay concentrated and do my best learning."

One day before the commencement of the ECS Season 1 LAN Finals, FACEIT held a press day, where all media outlets were able to interview some of the CS:GO players prior to their matches. We reached out to Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye to discuss his feelings on the new team.

Aleksei: How are you enjoying London, Markus?

Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye: I’m enjoying London, it’s my fourth time here. We’ve only been here for one day, so we haven’t been around too much yet, but it’s a nice city.



Aleksei : The arena, it’s quite an iconic one, one of the more beautiful buildings in the UK, how are you finding it, how are you finding the scenery?

Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye: The scenery is great of course, personally I haven’t seen the inside of the arena yet, where we’re going to play. Regardless, the scenery is awesome; I have high expectations and am sure I will not be disappointed.



Aleksei: You recently transferred to Astralis from Team Dignitas, how are you finding your stay?

Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye: I am very pleased so far, the transition is as good as it could have been. It’s obviously hard just changing from a team you have been playing on for one and a half years; there are a lot of changes. Personally I knew the guys from Astralis very well and we’re good friends, but it’s very different playing and practicing with four other players and getting to know their play style and such, so it’s hard but I’m just trying to stay concentrated and do my best learning the tactics and all those kind of things.



Aleksei: Would you say the team dynamics are down on lock as you guys knew each other beforehand, right?

Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye: Hmm, yeah I guess you could say so.



Aleksei: Any scope on how long you have been acquainted with the guys, how long you’ve been in contact?

Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye: I knew that they would probably change a few months ago; I casually talked to the manager, who had some plans with me. It sounded good and obviously it’s the best team in Denmark, that’s what all Danish players aim for, to play with the best team, who can compete for titles internationally and just in-general being a consistent team, reaching good placements in tournaments and good players.



Aleksei: As you mentioned, the best team in Denmark, do you feel pressure going into this team?

Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye: I don’t feel pressure, obviously there is some pressure. I think I’ve learnt to deal with it over my career already. I’ve only been playing two years, but I had a rough year in 2015, where I didn’t feel confident on the team, on my old team (Dignitas) and started underperforming a lot. The pressure kind of got to me, but I think that that stage of my career helped me improve on how to manage pressure. I think I’ve learned it so I’m not particularly under a lot of pressure.



Aleksei: We’re seeing de_Nuke introduced into the map pool, what are your thoughts on it?

Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye: I’m not sure how I find the map to be honest. It obviously needs a lot of tweaks, like most pro players are pointing out recently. I think it could be a good map, the old Nuke had a lot of great finals on it, a lot of good matchups historically, but as I said it needs tweaks before I can answer that question.



Aleksei : On the topic of tweaks, Cobblestone, we saw the introduction of stairs on B plateau, how do you think that’s going to play out in terms of bias towards a particular team?

Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye: The stairs could have made it more CT sided, before it was more T side, in my opinion. I think it’s good to have tweaks on maps, so that we can adapt and create new play styles and tactics. We haven’t really practiced a lot on it as we have just come back from DreamHack Summer.



Aleksei: ESL One: Cologne just around the corner, how are you guys going to prepare for it, what are your projections for the team?

Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye: I’m not going to play at the major because I was playing on behalf of Team Dignitas at the minor back then. I’m going to try and support the team as best as I can. They will have a boot camp with “gla1ve”, who will be standing in for me. I hope they won’t be too harsh on me *chuckles*, they’ll be playing the major without me. It was something I sacrificed when I joined the team, it was needed to make this change possible, and I’ve learned to live with it.



Aleksei: How do you think your absence and “glaive’s” presence will impact the team?

Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye: I think that’s impossible to answer for anyone. It’s something we’ll have to see, he’s obviously a different player compared to me. He’s been an in-game leader for years, so I hope the transition will work well for him coming into the boot camp and the major. Obviously not too well *laughs*. I really hope they reach the playoffs at the very least and I think it’s very possible with the roster that they have.



Aleksei: Any sort of projections for the team? How do you think they will place?

Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye: In Cologne or here?

Aleksei: Cologne.

Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye: I think they’ll be quite confident, without any pressure obviously, since they can’t expect much with a stand-in and little practice, but I think they expect to reach playoffs, playing a sort of play style reminiscent of NiP playing with “THREAT” the last major in Columbus, where they just played for fun and had fun.



Aleksei: On a more personal note, how do you find the travelling aspect of your job?

Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye: I find travelling well, the more I travel I can feel that when I finally get home it’s sort of exhausting, in a weird kind of way. You feel very tired for a couple of days, then you don’t really get back into your regular daily routine, it can be hard to find that. Sometimes I travel only days after to the next event, so you feel kind of silly sometimes, let’s say, but travelling around the world is great.



Aleksei: Talking about ECS Season 1, which teams would you like to face the most?

Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye: Basically anyone, the biggest challenge we’ve had so far with me in the team have been NiP, we still need to play all the best teams, Luminosity , Fnatic, all the best teams are here. We’re just looking forward, I think we can beat anyone if we play well, so I don’t really care about our opponents. Let’s see who we’ll face.



Aleksei: Cool man, thank you very much for the interview and best of luck to you at ECS.

Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye: Thank you.



Images courtesy of Adela Sznajder/DreamHack Flickr and Twitter