messioso: "A lot of people are doubting that we belong at this level"

Earlier today, Complexity fell to G2 in a two-map series in the semifinals of PGL Bucharest 2025 seeing the team's "Cinderella run" come to an end after an impressive change in the team's fortunes. While the team have missed finals, COL have done a lot of work to prove they belong in the tier-one scene and can mix things up with the best of the best.

This is one of the topics Jan "DOMiNA7HOR" Lindberg from Dust2.dk discussed with Graham "messioso" Pitt along with COL's run in Bucharest overall, the BLAST.tv Austin Major MRQs being online, and what the team's expectations are for IEM Melbourne.

How is the team overall feeling about their run in Bucharest with the squad claiming at least a top-four finish?

We're hoping to get a top-three finish [against FaZe tomorrow]. We played FaZe already and beat them 2-0 so we will try and give ourselves a little boost to end the tournament. It's nice to have an opportunity to redeem ourselves. A lot of people are doubting that we belong at this level so being able to have another opportunity to prove that is nice.

We've come here and only lost to one team which is good and bad. A lot of teams who come to tournaments and lose to one team finish in the finals. So if we do that it'd be great, if not we've had a really great week and that's good for confidence going into the NA MRQ.

After that we go straight to Melbourne so we've given ourselves a packed schedule. We need to keep going and I could sense that a lot of the pressure and frustration in getting into the semifinals has now creeped in so we need to learn to deal with that. It's been a long time since we've been a favored team and not an underdog and now we need to be at this level and respect the pressure that comes with that.

Good showing this week, and hopefully we can finish it with a win and then fly around the world.

G2 got the better of COL, what contributed to that?

We made a lot of really silly mistakes... although I'm sure every team that plays Counter-Strike says they make a lot of silly mistakes, but we made a lot and it cost us pretty huge. Simple things like miscommunications, getting caught up in ourselves, throwing executes before we need to, things that we can control.

I'd call them unforced errors and unforced errors are the ones where you need to be at the top of your game and you need to be removing those. The other team is trying to make you create errors and you need to be able to adapt to that as well, but it was the unforced errors that cost us today. We need to be self-reflective and look at ourselves and go from there.

You mentioned the MRQ being right around the corner. How are you feeling about the Major qualifier being online?

I understand why from a business perspective. In the past Valve would cover the flights and accommodation for the RMRs that don't exist anymore and those have been absorbed into the Major.

I think we've all heard about the "Esports Winter" that's going on and everyone is losing money. I don't think it's a tournament organizer's obligation to go out of their way to lose more money and there's no way you could make money on an event like an MRQ.

It's an unfortunate issue that Valve needs to resolve and one that doesn't rely on the TO themselves. The only region where they should absolutely be a [LAN] MRQ is Asia because Asia is split over too many regions, the ping is impossible, and determining who gets extra slots — it doesn't make sense.

Asia definitely needs a LAN MRQ where they can qualify two teams from each region and fight it out. Having an NA MRQ and an SA MRQ makes sense and the game should be global, so both regions should have opportunities to send teams 100% of the time.

I'd love for it to be on LAN but then you're running two LANs instead of one LAN and the cost is the office. Valve are the ones that need to step up and put the money into it to make it happen.

What are your feelings about Melbourne with it coming up?

Last time we went to Australia in Sydney 2023 we lost the finals to FaZe in a super close game. The jetlag can hit people in different ways and although we adjusted pretty well the last time we just have to go there and give it our all. We're playing The MongolZ first game and I'm assuming they're back in Mongolia so they won't be as jetlagged.

Some of our flights going from Mexico and NA to Melbourne are 35+ hours so we've got a hell of a travel day but when we got the opportunity we all agreed we had to give it everything and ride the way of success from Bucharest.

If we didn't take the opportunity we'd regret it so we have to go in with that mindset that we're lucky to be here and it's a bonus event for us.