sycrone: "I've been waiting for Championship Sunday for a while now"

Prior to IEM Dallas, not many would have touted MOUZ as potential tournament victors. Going out 0-3 in the Challengers Stage at the BLAST.tv Paris Major, the European organization looked set to limp into the player break following their final event of the season in the USA. Against all odds, MOUZ finds themselves facing off against ENCE in the grand final after an impressive win over Heroic in the semifinals. Following that stunning win, Dust2.us' Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore got the chance to catch up with MOUZ coach Dennis "sycrone" Nielsen.

Please note that the full interview can be found below on YouTube, while the transcript has some key snippets from their conversation.

I think every single map had a star performance from one of the players. You had dexter going insane on Vertigo, you had JDC having a real star level performance on Overpass then torzsi stepped up on the AWP on Ancient. Looking at this team, I think one of the big goals of MOUZ has been what's been called a budget super team or a budget FaZe where every single player has the potential to have a superstar game. Is that sort of the goal of MOUZ where every single player on MOUZ can pop off when they need to?

I think we have a really good unit where the team is greater than the sum of it's part and that's really what we are going for always. I mean, it's great to have a team where anyone can pop off, even dexter right. I think it's part of the good team culture and good team cohesion that we have, that we are able to do that. That's more what we are going for instead of just having five superstars or five budget superstars.

You were called up from MOUZ NXT and despite your long career as a player and as a coach, this is your first S tier, huge LAN tournament where you are going to the finals. How does that feel for you in your extended career to finally have that opportunity to be on the big stage on that Sunday, fighting for the trophy?

I've been waiting for championship Sunday for a while now and finally, it is here. It feels good.

I think a lot of players and teams come into IEM Dallas as the defacto last tournament before the player break, this year we have BLAST but this is usually the last event before the player break, kind of in an awkward state as they are already considering what they are going to do for the player break. They are exhausted from the Major and there's added pressure because there is CS2 coming out. I was wondering, this performance I'm sure changes discussion in the teams camp. How does this factor into any decision-making you have during the player break?

I think one of the big concerns that we had before next season was that we were going to have no points and almost no invites. So having a good result here means that we will have points to play Cologne, we will have points to play some of the other tournaments next year and I think that was the biggest concern that we will have to look into over the break like what can we even play at this point.

MOUZ will square off against ENCE in the Grand Final of IEM Dallas today at 01:30PM