Nach einer Niederlage in der Gruppenphase gegen mousesports und einer weiteren im Viertelfinale gegen G2 sind die ESL Pro League Finals für FaZe Clan mit einem 5.-6. Platz beendet. Der neue InGame-Leader 
NEO spricht im Interview mit uns über die Atmosphäre im Team, Coach YNk und seine Meinung zu Vertigo.
readmore: You have been playing with the team now for about a month, what is the atmosphere within the team?
NEO: „The atmosphere is great, I like it so much. People keep it professional. Since you have everyone from a different country, you can feel that there are different personalities coming with that. Everyone knows you can have some miscommunication because of that, and it is great that everyone knows about that and keeps it professional.“
readmore: FaZe brought on YnK at the start of the year as your new coach. What aspects of your gameplay has he been focusing on the most? What did he try to improve?
NEO: „What I like about [YNk] is that he tries to bring in the energy into the game, like motivate guys when things are going down. That is a good thing that he is doing. He is bringing more to the table of course, not only during the game but also the tactical side of the game, he organizes everything. I think he is leading the team pretty well.“
readmore: In yesterday’s match against G2 you showed rather poor performances on the CT side. Was it the communication simply not being on point or were there other problems?
NEO: „I mean, CS:GO is such a dynamic game. We were counting the rounds we lost, so we actually won every gun-to-gun round but lost like three rounds where they had only Deagles or Mac10s and just rushed. Things like that happen. They shot some incredible Deagle shots at the start and destroyed our defences. We are struggling with that part obviously, against mousesports as well our CT-side on Train wasn’t that great. We are working on that but it is really hard, because like you said I joined the team a month ago and changing the whole structure or building a new one takes time. The stability is the hardest party of it all. I hope we are just going to get there with bringing our game to a constant level.“
readmore: You vetoed Vertigo yesterday against G2 but decided to play it against mousesports the other day. What do you think about the map in its current state?
NEO: „Obviously, people are still trying to find it out. They are still testing different approaches to it, you can feel that. For example, yesterday there was the game between Astralis and Liquid. I don’t think any of the teams went mid, maybe once during the whole game or twice. People just go directly towards A or B. That just shows how the map is kind of broken at some point. It is really hard; the CT options are very limited to defend the places. I would say it still needs some adjustments, but it is really hard to say from my perspective because I have never created a map myself. It is not in a perfect state right now.“
readmore: We recently saw an update nerfing the AUG. Do you think the gun is balanced now or are there still some changes needed?
NEO: „I haven’t tried it yet because we have been playing on an older patch. But honestly, I like the changes, I like having new weapons being viable options. I felt like before the AUG got a bit buffed the CTs were struggling a lot, Ts were superior with the cheap AKs. I like the changes; it obviously changes a lot. Small adjustments are always nice, I’m good with what is going on and it seems like they adjusted the AUG again and when I get home I will try it out myself.“
readmore: There has been a lot of criticism towards the seeding and tournament format at ESL events lately. What do you think about the format and what would you change?
NEO: „I mean it is really hard to say. It is really hard to find a proper one, every [format] has it flaws, so you could complain about all of them. I honestly don’t have any specific opinion. When I come to a tournament and they tell me we are playing this or that I’ll just do it and give my best. I don’t really like format where you have too many Best-of-One games, because that is really the most random thing in CS. You lose just two pistol rounds, maybe an eco and you already lose the map which causes you to go out of the tournament. So just avoiding Best-of-Ones is good for me.“
