ENCE Snappi: “Roobet was just a warm up. We only played badly at BLAST.”

In most of the recent big CS:GO tournaments, ENCE have been that one team that always get in the playoffs but never quite finish the run until the very end. Runner-up in IEM Dallas, 3rd-4th finisher at PGL Major Antwerp and second-place at ESL Pro league Season 15. Despite being the top three CS:GO squad in the world, they’re still waiting to lift their s-tier trophy. 

Their streak of playoff finishes was broken during the BLAST Premier Spring Final 2022, where they finished 5th-6th after getting eliminated from the quarterfinals by Team Vitality. The same bad luck continued in Roobet Cup, however, this time they got eliminated by FaZe Clan. 

Roobet was just a warmup

However, ENCE don’t consider their recent results a setback. For the team’s IGL Marco “Snappi” Pfeiffer, one bad placement doesn’t have to mean anything, while Roobet Cup was a mere practice. 

In the recent ESL Gaming press session, Snappi commented on the team’s previous appearances: “I mean it was just one tournament, it was only BLAST. I don’t consider Roobet the same — it was an online event, that’s very different. It was a warmup tournament. We only really played badly at BLAST.”

ENCE’s last considerably successful run was the IEM in Dallas, where the team played with Polish CS:GO veteran Janusz “Snax” Pogorzelski as a stand-in for Lotan “Spinx” Giladi, who wasn’t able to attend the event due to visa issues. With the roster in full power now, the team hopes for a comparable result. 

We had much fun in Dallas with the stand-in,” said Pavle “maden” Bošković. “Obviously, you have nothing to lose when you play with a stand-in so that’s why we went so deeply into the playoffs.”

Sharing his expectations ahead of the next IEM edition, maden continued: “I think now in Cologne it’s going to be much different with Spinx. The structure will be there along with the things that we worked on. I think it can be as good as in Dallas.” Indeed, despite the fact that there are no clear favourites for this tournament, ENCE are undoubtedly one of the teams that are expected to get far. 

CS:GO in Poland is non-existent 

While ENCE is a Finnish esports organisation, its current CS:GO roster fields players from various countries, with two of them being from Poland. During the press conference, Paweł “dycha” Dycha and Aleksander “hades” Miskiewicz were asked about the current professional CS:GO scene in Poland. Their answer was rather upsetting. 

“It doesn’t exist, said dycha. “We have some bad teams who are still fighting. They’re all the way down in the mood but there is nothing else.” While dycha thinks there is still a chance for the Polish pro scene, he sees a problem in the high egos of players as well as in their unwillingness to play with each other. 

“People are expecting too much salary,” he added. “They don’t want to practice and they don’t want to play Counter-Strike after practice. And also everyone wants to be a star so, have fun.”

Hades shed even more light on the CS:GO situation in Poland: “Once people have a contract, a lot of them just start being lazy. They don’t play outside of training and everyone wants to be a superstar. There’s also a lot of baiting going on in Polish teams. 

“People have high egos, high expectations, and once they have contact, a lot of them don’t play, that’s what I have seen. There is a lot of good individuals but it’s hard to build a team which has good chemistry together and is willing to put hours into it inside and outside of training.” 

First loss at IEM Cologne

ENCE’s first match in the Group A of IEM Cologne 2022 ended up with a 2-1 loss against Team Vitality. their next appearance will be the lower bracket series against G2 Esports, scheduled for Friday, July 8 at 7:30 pm CEST.

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