dephh: "M80 have outgrown NA competition"

Despite M80's elimination from ESL Challenger Atlanta 2023 at the hands of BESTIA, the team have a lot to be proud of this year. In a short amount of time, the organization has cemented themselves as a force to reckoned with domestically, recently winning ESL Challenger League Season 46 in a near-perfect fashion.

To reflect on M80's rise and their aspirations for the future, Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore spoke to the team's coach and Atlanta stand-in Rory Jackson to discuss the team's run in Atlanta, their progress towards being an international contender in 2024, and the integration of Fritz "slaxz-" Dietrich into the lineup, among other topics.

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

There were multiple times in the series where it looked like M80 could've forced a third map against BESTIA, especially on Anubis, what do you think mainly went wrong today?

I feel like we had a good game plan for today, but its just kind of what happens when you replace your caller last minute. It's the whole system that maNkz has given this team. It's then moments when you need to tweak your game that we struggled at today.

I'm really proud of how the guys conducted themselves regardless in just having a coach come in and call last minute, so I'm really proud of the guys.

How do you feel about your performance, do you feel you rose to the occasion in your stand-in performance?

My last pro game was in late 2018 or 2019 and obviously everyone is so good here. I think I played ok but I won't be looking back on it thinking, 'oh I should've done more', because I had a week to get ready.

What's the attitude of the team of the team, once you knew maNkz wasn't going to make it, was there an expectation to go further or did the team cut their losses and play as best as they could?

We were definitely in a "fuck it" kind of style, whatever happens. We really wanted at least one win, that was the goal here. So we played some teams close so not too bad of a result I think.

As this is only M80's second LAN together, is there still things that be taken away from it?

I think just us getting used to a crowd, getting used to the noise, playing on stage over your setup at home. Apart from that, no. I think these guys are ready for some international experience, especially some practice again in Europe. Really excited to get back to Europe and see how we do.

Focusing on something more positive, we've seen slaxz- have a great debut over the past month with M80. How do you rate his progress thus far transitioning to an international team?

He's great. Adding him too in just the way Europeans think about CS and maNkz's calling style... so now we have a Danish guy and a German guy both clear in their ideas of how they think they should play CS.

We dramatically improved not just by getting a stronger AWPer, but also just the team and the way we play is better also.

There's been a lot said about M80 trying to become a European playing style, and was a big focus when the roster was assembled. How do you feel reck, swisher, and malbsMd are in the transition into becoming air-quotes "European players"?

We wanted to take some guys from NA who were "unproven" that we saw potential in and then introduce a European style and system. The Danish system is obviously been around for a long time now, a lot of great Danish callers in teams, regardless of the players, are successful. We knew bringing in maNkz and having his system and then having the NA players follow was going to make them play really good and offer Europe competition.