Axed: "I think that we can live up to this pressure"

BLAST Premier Fall Groups didn't start well for Evil Geniuses, who had to deal with 2023 BLAST.tv Paris Major winners Vitality as their opening matchup. The series went by in a flash, as Vitality showed why they are considered the best team. Nonetheless, EG had some good moments which made things look a bit less dark. Dust2.us' Gonçalo "GoncOak" Carvalho had time to sit down and talk with Tommy "Axed" Ryan. The two talked about the game, the role Damien "maLeK" Marcel plays, and the tier one debut for some players.

Obviously, not the scores you wanted. A lot of things need to be worked on, but what's the most immediate thing you guys will be looking to fix?

The most immediate thing we are looking to fix would probably be our endings in rounds. I think we have a long way to go in terms of the micro in every round that we play. We have been focusing a lot on communication and our energy levels are high, everyone's getting along, the environment's great for everybody to play in, and there is freedom. We need a little bit more time to implement a true system, we have only been a team for a week, we have changed a lot, and we are a young team who doesn't have a ton of experience in a stage like this, versus a team like this. Time, I think, can help everything.

You talked about the ending of rounds, I want to talk about the beginning. Jeorge had four opening kills on the T-side of the first map, despite your T-side not being very good. How would you rate Jeorge's debut? And what about Walco's?

I'm very proud of both of them. For Jeorge, it looked like he was comfortable, he did the same things he was doing in NA on a much bigger scale, obviously versus these teams. It's nice to see that he is still confident and playing the same style, knowing what he is good at, playing to his strengths.

For Walco, he had a couple of big rounds where he has 2Ks and 3Ks to help us hold bomb sites. I'm really happy with the way he is coming along, for us as a young team, we need to help define his calling because we haven't played against teams like these that are making adjustments at this level. It becomes a lot more of a mind game in tier one and we only had experience practicing against teams like this for about a week, so I think the more we get experience with Damien, the sky is the limit for him.

Would you say that Damien is also helping you become a better coach?

Damien's been to the biggest tournaments in the world, he has worked with some of the biggest players of Counter-Strike, he is an amazing guy, he is charismatic and he is very open-minded, he is helping me a lot to understand what's expected of a coach inside and outside of the games, setting very high-standards for all of us. It's very exciting to learn from somebody like that because he is willing to help a young team like ours gain experience and information, we have never really had the ability to get to. We love him and he is like our team dad, to be honest.

One positive sign from this series was junior. He looked very comfortable and very strong on both maps regardless of the weapon he had. Is he taking more active roles or was just this a case of "if they don't do it, I'll do it myself"?

Paytyn has the ability to do anything that he wants, we encourage him to play freely. He is an active player, I think he can be a little bit of both, he knows when he needs to step up and when we need him to playback and support us. He is a happy-go-lucky kid, he likes to laugh and have fun, and that shows in our gameplay as well. We can be losing and we can be laughing and having a good time, we understand we have a lot of work to do and I'm excited to see him progress underneath us. During his first stints in tier one, there were external factors, maybe, you could say, and right now, here, we have given him the ability to be free and feel as comfortable as possible.

Your next game is Saturday. You don't know your opponent yet. Will tomorrow be a full-on practice day will you guys stick to just reviewing this match?

For tomorrow, I think that a lot of the things that went wrong during the game came down to communication, for us to review it, we will absolutely look at rounds in detail, but moving forward we needed to get the first-game jitters out of the way, by no means is that an excuse. Now I think that the boys understand what's expected of them on the stage, we need to perform at the highest level, and so, given a little bit more time, I think that we can live up to this pressure and, in terms of expectations, I don't think we actually come into this tournament expecting a lot, we understand that we need to earn it.

Evil Geniuses await their next opponent as it will be the loser of the Complexity v. NIP match.