hAdji on the Falcons matchup: "These guys are 100% scared to play us"

After a close 16-12 overtime loss against Vitality, Ali "hAdji" Haïnouss, who was the second-best French player in that match just behind Mathieu "ZywOo" Herbaut, talked with Dust2.us' Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore about leaving the French scene behind after several years playing with and against the same players. While hAdji is currently standing in for Monte, the player is open to join an international squad in the future.

The two also spoke about Monte's next matchup, Falcons, who hAdji represented between February 2022 and January 2023, with the French player arguing that Monte have a good shot at eliminating the Saudi-backed team thanks to the pressure his opponents may feel.

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

With you joining Monte as a stand-in, this is actually your first international team since Windigo all the way back in 2019. What prompted your decision to start playing in an international team again?

As you said, it's been a long time since I haven't played in an international team, it's been five or four years now. I feel like I tried kind of everything in the French scene, I played with a lot of the same players for a lot of years and I thought it would be better for me if I wanted to improve in CS and do something with my CS career, I need to try something else. Naturally, it just came out that I needed to go out of the French scene and go international again.

Is that why you chose to step down from 3DMAX after the RMR? At the time you said you were very disappointed with your performance and felt that you had to go look at different offers but why did you decide to leave 3DMAX and, by extension, the French scene?

When you look back to last year, I started playing with these 3DMAX guys for almost a year and, as I said, it's more of playing with the same guys every time for so long. It just felt that we tried so much together that I didn't believe anymore that we as a group could make something really great in CS. We tried, I tried, so much with the same guys in the French scene that I just needed to try something else.

Due to the format of IEM Dallas, you guys will be in action later today against Falcons and you have precious little time to prepare for that match. How are you feeling going into that match, do you think you can take the BO3 over them?

Yeah, of course, I think we can win. I think these guys [Falcons] have insane pressure on their shoulders and I've been on the Falcons organization before, I stayed for a year, it was a French team and I know for a fact that the guys in the organization are normal, they want fast results and especially with this international team. They are spending so much money on this, with buyouts, salaries, and they are not getting the results they want. It's a good thing for us, I think they are going to be really scared to play against us, they have to win, because if they don't they lose to a team with one stand-in and one new player, and the comparison of the money each team put in the teams is insane. All pressure on them.

So you think you will have the mental edge today?

Yeah, for sure. These guys are 100% scared to play us and I think they know that if it goes bad for them it could mean changes in the team, for sure.