daps after besting NIP: "I think we have 100% made the Major"

NRG pulled off a huge victory at Fragadelphia Fragville this weekend after the team took down NIP 3-1 in the grand finals. This win likely secured the team a spot at the upcoming StarLadder Budapest Major. Following this win, Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" spoke to NRG coach Damian "daps" Steele about the win, the Major implications, and how the win helps to vindicate the recent additions of Zack "XotiC" Elshani and Aran "Sonic" Groesbeek.

The complete interview can be found below on YouTube and fully transcribed below. The questions and answers were slightly edited for clarity and length.

This is a huge win for NRG by taking down NIP and securing a ton of VRS points. How are you feeling coming out of that victory over NIP?

We feel really good despite having three days of practice with Sonic. Winning was the best case scenario and I think we 100% made the Major even by just making the semifinals. Now it puts us in a good position to get Stage Two or Stage Three.

We feel amazing.

This was XotiC's first LAN event win, first win against an international team, and potentially his first Major. We couldn't speak to him, but do you know how he's feeling after this win?

It's definitely exciting for him and I don't think he has even processed it to the fullest extent. It's his first time beating a European team and a lot of other firsts for him. He's super happy and he wants to keep focusing on improving, but I'd have to ask him, but I'm sure he's pretty happy right now.

It's only been two months since XotiC has been brought onto this NRG squad. Do you think this win vindicates your decision to bring him on?

Yeah. It's tough being a North American team because you don't have a huge pool of players and you have to stay within the region to keep your VRS. There hasn't been that many AWPer's outside of oSee, Skadoodle, and JDM a long time ago.

NA has always struggled with AWPer's and everyone knows this, so giving him a chance was a risk and we're going to keep working on him to make sure he's improving and to make sure it works out long term.

You also recently added Sonic to replace nosraC. What can you tell us about that decision and do you think it has paid off?

100%. nosraC put in a lot of work and I was impressed with his work ethic when he was getting into it but it's essentially an experience thing. It's really hard to work with an AWPer who hasn't played pro in seven or eight years and then also have nosraC who doesn't have experience at a higher level coupled with Jeorge not having a lot of experience.

We wanted to bring Sonic in to provide a bit more stability and he's also played the roles nosraC was in way more than nosraC has. That was the main reason for that.

Looking towards the future what's your schedule looking like if you do decide to pull out of Blocktober like you said on the desk?

We pretty much dropped out of everything because we're bootcamping for 10-12 days before Pro League so we can't really play anything online prior to that. To attend Blocktober we would have to leave Sweden during Pro League so we're dropping out of Blocktober.

Pretty much all we have is a bootcamp and Pro League and that's it before the Major cutoff.