hampus on headtr1ck: "He will be up there in the top ten players of the world"

Dust2.us' coverage of the IEM Cologne Play-Ins is nearly wrapped up, with one of the final conversations coming between Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore and NIP's in-game leader Hampus "hampus" Poser following his team's dramatic 2-1 victory over Imperial, securing his team a spot at IEM Cologne. The two discuss the blossoming talent Daniil "headtr1ck" Valitov, hampus' return to form, developing AWPers, and much more.

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

Coming off an amazing win over Imperial, how were things going in the NIP camp?

It was obviously super hectic. We had a good start on the T side then they locked us down, but we had a good gameplan. I felt confident in what to call, we lost some unlucky rounds, and won some lucky rounds of course, but toward the end, it was super hectic with everyone screaming and things like this. It just feels good.

This is only your third event with headtr1ck. How have you been adapting to having the AWPer of headtr1ck on your team?

Two and a half events, actually. It’s good. I have played with a lot of different AWPers in NIP, some less experienced and some more experienced so I know how to handle my AWPers I would say. I played with dev1ce who knew what to do and I played with phzy who was coming up with no experience and I had to help a lot. I know how to help them and sometimes I am hard at him but I need to hard so he learns, right?

He’s super skilled and we all believe in him and as you see he can do these clutches almost every game. He makes a highlight every game almost, so I’m just happy to have him. He’s 18 or 19 years old, this is his second team, he’s been playing tier-one for not even a year. In one, two, three years he will be up there in the top ten players of the world.

You’re only recently coming fully back into action, but you had a fantastic performance on Nuke. Do you think you’re back to 100% of the skill we saw before your hiatus?

Thank you for the comment but no I am not even close to how good I can be. We only had four practices before BLAST, then we went into BLAST and came here so we haven’t had a lot of time to play. We’ve played a lot of games but I still feel I am a little bit rusty. On the Overpass game I choked on some duels I know I normally wouldn’t choke.

But, I haven’t spoken English in six months, and then coming back to calling from like a year ago, calling in English, and all of these new things, new voices with k0nfig and headtr1ck, it is a lot in my head. I think I am at 60-70% right now. Every time a team gets a new IGL he needs to think about a lot so I think all IGLs play bad in the beginning of teams and once the team gets used to my calling or the calling of the IGL it's easier to play for the IGL.

You can watch the full interview below: