Heroic Jabbi on BLAST Premier EU Showdown: “If we play the CS we want to play, I think we can win the whole tournament.”

The BLAST Premier: Fall Showdown 2022 starts today in both Europe and North America, bringing some top-tier CS:GO action to the fans ahead of the highly-anticipated Major in Rio, which kicks off in less than two weeks. 

Only one team from each region can secure a spot in the Fall Finals, and currently in the European Showdown, Heroic and Team Vitality are the two favorites expected to meet in a final battle for a ticket to Copenhagen’s Royal Arena.

Heroic confident ahead of EU Showdown

Following Heroic’s not-so-astounding results at the ESL Pro League S16, where they finished 9th-12th, along with the 7th-9th finish at the BLAST Premier Fall Groups, the team has recently shown great form at the IEM Rod to Rio European RMR B. The Danish team qualified for the Major with the Legends Status along with Natus Vincere and ENCE, and now seem to be ready to contest the Fall Final spot.

To find out more about the team’s mindset and expectations ahead of the start of the tournament, we spoke with Heroic’s most recent addition Jakob “Jabbi” Nygaard, who’s, according to the words of Heroic Coach Richard “Xizt” Landström, “the biggest talent in Denmark”.

Fragster: So Jabbi, the BLAST Premier Fall Showdown is starting soon, how do you feel about the tournament, and what’s the atmosphere within the team? Do you feel prepared? 

Jabbi: We feel pretty confident. We finished the IEM Road to Rio RMR pretty well, with two wins against OG and Team Vitality. We have also been playing pretty well in practice, so we have a lot of confidence. I’m looking forward to it. 

Your first opponent is ECSTATIC, what are your expectations from this match?

We are preparing as we usually do. We don’t underestimate any team because it can go down fast and you can lose the whole tournament because of it. ECSTATIC are northern players, I think they’re good players and a good team. Although they have been struggling a little bit after the RMR, I’m sure they can still do damage in the upcoming tournament.

If you manage to beat them, next you will face either BIG or Sangal, whom you both defeated in the previous faceoffs. Considering that, the chances to see you guys in the Grand Final seem to be pretty high. Do you see yourself finishing on stage? 

I see ourselves doing that, yes. If we play the Counter-Strike we want to play, then I think we can win the whole tournament. But I would say it also depends a lot on the day. If we play really bad CS then we don’t deserve to be in the grand final. So it’s up to us to play well. 

And if you do, considering that it will be most likely either Team Vitality or Astralis who will reach the finale, who you’d rather face in the grand final? 

The Astralis game could be seen as the two best Danish teams playing for the only spot in the Royal Arena, so I think that could be a good match. 

I’m not satisfied yet, I still have a lot to work on  

You’ve been a part of Heroic for three months now, how have you adapted to the new team? It was evident already at the beginning that you’re getting used to Heroic pretty well, but how would you reflect on that after three months? Are you satisfied with the team and with where you’re at right now?

I’m not satisfied, because there are still some things I need to know and some tactics that I need to learn. I still have a lot to work on and we also still have much to work on as a team. It’s a long progress, so I’m not satisfied, but maybe soon we will be. 

Can you provide an example of what you need to work on? 

It’s just a lot of individual mistakes I do, and then also stuff we do as a team. These are mistakes that shouldn’t happen so often. For example, it can be tough matches where we die too many times and then there’s no money for the rest of the rounds. Really small stuff like that can change the game a lot. 

You’re known for your confident playstyle. Having played among the elite during these past months, has anything changed in your playstyle? Can we expect the same kind of “cocky” approach as usual? 

Yeah, I’m feeling at a pretty good spot in the team right now. In the start, it was a bit weird because I was the new guy and I needed to adapt to the things we have to do as a team. But now I think we have a good mix between doing individual plays and really good teamwork. So yes, you can look forward to that. 

And what about your football performance, do you guys still play together? 

Yes, we play sometimes with the team as you can see on some of our Twitter clips and I would say I’m decent. Yeah, decent. 

We know we can play well, it’s about being consistent

As you’ve already mentioned, Heroic managed to qualify for the Major in Rio with a Legend status after defeating Vitality and OG in tiebreakers. Was it expected, given your previous results? 

We know that we can play this well. I mean, the Outsiders game [Swiss stage Round 2] wasn’t pretty but in the rest of the matches we played, we were actually really good. And we know that we can play this good, it’s just about being consistent and I think we did at that tournament. 

So it wasn’t a big surprise that we went through. We also expected to qualify for the Major, but obviously, it’s such a tough qualifier that even G2 and Astralis didn’t go through. It’s really a tough one. 

During the RMR tiebreakers, you had to play three best-of-threes which is 6 maps in a row. Obviously, you ended up winning both, but it undoubtedly wasn’t easy. How did you handle the pressure? 

It was one of the toughest days we ever had together. There was no energy left when we won that game. During the first match, it was still good energy. Some of us were feeling a little bit ill, but we managed to pull through. 

Then we had the second match, and during the third map, I could feel my stomach hurting and it was not because I had not eaten anything. It was just, I don’t know, I guess I didn’t have anything left in me. It was a weird feeling. But I’m happy we managed to qualify even though we couldn’t concentrate. 

Did you get to celebrate afterward?

We went to the park and got one or two beers I think. About four hours after we won that game, we had to leave for the airport, so there was no time to celebrate. 

And how confident are you ahead of the Major? 

Right now, the Major’s open pretty much for everyone. I would say there’s no team that’s a clear favorite and I think that’s a really good thing. It makes the major more interesting. 

But yeah, we are feeling confident, we have been playing well and got a good result at the RMR. If we can continue with that and also make a good result at BLAST, that would be even better to go to the Major with.

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