Cooper-: "I'm past the honeymoon phase of playing Pro, I want to start actually competing and winning"
Ahead of the start of the ESL One New York semifinals, Joe "tolkienfanatic" Cardali had the chance to catch up with eUnited AWPer and in-game leader Austin "Cooper-" Abadir to discuss the team's elimination during the group stage of the event, changes to eUnited following the addition brother of Ryan "freakazoid" Abadir, the playing environment in North America, and more.
Things probably didn't go the way you hoped here, so walk me through what happened at the event.
Against Liquid we started well on Overpass, it was a close game to the end but they got the last couple crucial rounds. Mirage was pretty bad, not much to say about that one, we have to go back and look at that.
Against ENCE, both games were pretty close, it felt like we could have had either map but it just came down again to the crucial rounds in the end. I'm not sure, I watched some VODs but maybe a couple rounds I called ended up stringing a few rounds together for them.
Recently both online and on LAN you've played some close maps against higher ranked opposition. What are your takeaways from that and how are you trying to make strides to improve?
My whole thing, and a2z, we just want to keep working hard, you know? We think that, now with freakazoid, we have the experience and stuff, so as long as everyone just keeps putting in more effort than the other teams are, we come to practice prepared and have productive practices, we can eventually be taking maps off these top teams.
How much time did you actually have to practice with freakazoid after the swap for moose?
I'd say three to four days only.
Was he basically taking moose's spots?
No, we changed a few spots, it was definitely more change than we thought. But I still think we played ok, considering.
Do you anticipate that there will be more changes to those roles, or do you think you have it figured out?
I think when we have more time to break down all the maps there might be more changes, but I still think everything will fit together pretty well. We did need some more aggressive rifling.
You mentioned your coach a2z earlier, can you talk about what he brings to the team?
If anyone has talked to a2z, just when he starts talking, his demeanor is calm, he's good at defusing arguments, and someone you can feel comfortable talking to. He's a good person to have on a team to make sure that everyone stays working hard and is responsible for themselves. If you need someone to talk to, he's there.
I was talking to clerkie earlier and he mentioned that you, vanity, and moose are living together in Houston. How did that come together?
moose and vanity just moved to Texas because it is cheap and there is good ping online. Honestly it was probably just an impulse decision *laughs*. We're all close by, its nice.
As a team you pop up pretty frequently on the FPL leaderboards, do you find that is a good way to let off steam within the team?
I think there just isn't too much else to play, you know what I mean? FPL is good to work on your own mechanics, but I think it makes me more frustrated than calm *laughs*.
In terms of there not being much else to play, if there was more to play, would you guys actually want to do that? Why do you think things are the way they are in North America?
I'm not sure, its hard to say. A lot of teams travel a lot. I think if everyone, instead of saying "FPL is bad" or "Rank S is bad", if everyone just played, it would be a much better atmosphere for improving.
Obviously when you made the jump from Swole Patrol to eUnited there was a lot of drama, and a bit of a public rift between you and your brother. Can you talk about how things were left there and how they have progressed since?
After I left and Ryan had the Twitter/Twitch rant - I didn't even watch that stuff, honestly - I was pretty frustrated that he did that, obviously. My dad was pretty frustrated, he ended up calling me, then calling Ryan. Then we kind of left it unsaid for a few days. Then I talked to Ryan, and we pretty much just worked it out from there.
Everyone thought we hated each other for months, but no, it was perfectly fine after a week.
Obvious question, but you two are excited to be teaming together again?
Yeah, I mean, I talked to him and I said if he was trying to come back and play this is probably going to be his only chance, at least for the foreseeable future. So I talked to him, he went and talked to his girlfriend, he figured it out. We're happy to be together, yeah.
You guys were recently embroiled in another controversy with those whole Envy and DreamHack Masters Malmo qualifier thing. Nifty put out a video basically saying you guys aren't professional because you were participating in multiple events. What is your stance on that?
Well, the info that we had, I don't know if they had the same info, because what I see them say is different - maybe their coach talked to someone and didn't tell the players or something, but the admins were telling us if we played ECS we could play later and everything was fine.
Once we were done, we were ready to play, and apparently Envy didn't have the same info as us because they weren't ready to play. I don't know, I think it was just miscommunication between all the parties. From our point of view, it just seemed like they didn't want to play us.
Is there any lingering bad blood there?
I don't think so, if they don't like us that's one thing, but I don't have a problem with any of them.
Have you been following MDL at all this season?
Not too much. I have some friends in Advanced and Main, but I don't follow MDL as much as I probably should.
You yourself have had a pretty quick rise up through the scene, some alongside your brother and some not. How surreal has the whole experience been?
When I started playing, it was my goal, I saw Ryan traveling and I wanted to travel around the world. And now I've done it, you know? So now I feel like its more that I just want to win. I'm tired of just going and losing, we've had enough of those for me *laughs* I feel like I'm past the honeymoon phase of playing Pro, I want to start actually competing and winning.
The next event for Cooper- and eUnited will be ESL Pro League Season 10, which is set to commence on October 8th.
