Falcon Going All-In On Katowice With s1mple, zonic Explains

Keeping that in mind, Danny "⁠zonic⁠" Sørensen, the team’s head coach, has said that Team Falcon will be gambling and going all-in on this tournament. Such a move is understandable as we’re approaching the end of the year and next year will be much better for Team Falcon given the upcoming roster changes. Falcon’s coach sat down with HLTV ahead of ESL Challenger’s Katowice to discuss the state of affairs.

When asked about what has been happening behind-the-scenes in the midst of Falcon’s downward spiral, zonic said:

I've always liked this approach of trying to be transparent with the players. They also know that throughout this season it became more and more clear that changes were needed, especially when it comes around to the firepower department. In ENCE, Snappi and maden were used to having a guy like NertZ, and also me, Magisk and dupreeh were used to having Spinx and ZywOo.

It has been clear that we have been needing this firepower, this star player, a guy like Magisk will shine under. It's been very rough on the team this year. But we're never giving up, and it's good to have Sasha coming back, first and foremost for the entire scene, but also for our team. It's needed.

When asked about benching SunPayus, the team’s best player stat-wise, and bringing s1mple in instead, zonic said:

I think we tried multiple scenarios. It's also when all the players are roster locked in terms of going into the RMR and the Major being so close, it's difficult getting the exact match that we wanted. Sasha was available. I think we have tried everything that we could, at least from my side of things. It has been so horrible for all of us this season, and we might as well go all-in and make a home run and see if we can get Sasha back to somewhat his former level and also a gamble, so to speak.

Fom what I've seen so far, he [s1mple] is only improving and it goes really fast. You have these type of players, you also saw it with device being away for a year and also with my time with ZywOo, that those players just have that raw talent where it will kinda always be there. One day they might lose the motivation, but if they are hungry and they want to prove themselves, then I have a hard time seeing that they don't find their way back to a very very strong level. As I said before, I don't expect him to come back to the Sasha that we know, I think he needs a little bit more time, but he's definitely qualified to play for Falcons.

When asked about how well s1mple adjusted to CS2 and its meta behind-the-scenes, zonic said:

I've seen a guy who is progressing on a daily basis. I know the results didn't really showcase that, but we've chosen to play these tournaments based on him getting some official practice as well. We would have loved a better start, but, to be fair to him, it was definitely not his fault that we lost those two games. I think he did phenomenally, thinking about how long he's been away. It's just good to see that in practice, that he adapts to the way the game is being played. He was out for quite some time and it's also a new game on top of that, but you can see that he's definitely not been away from the game, that he has been following and also grinding a lot lately.

For a guy who has been away for so long, you can definitely see that he's still watching a lot of games. Maybe there was a down period when it comes to him playing FACEIT, but I think the last month and a half, if people go in and check, he's been playing pretty much 24/7. I'm actually surprised about how far ahead he is in that regard. Of course there are some suggestions from him like, they did this utility back in NAVI or whatever, and we kinda know that, nowadays, that doesn't work, we also did that in Vitality and in CS2 it just doesn't work. But I'm positively surprised by how he is when it comes to playing the game.

Towards the end, when asked about s1mple’s potential prospects of being a permanent member after his loan expires, zonic said:

I'm not gonna go too much into details with this. We're here right now and my only focus is the RMR. I think for me and for the team it's really important that we qualify [for the Major], that's the only thing that can somewhat save our season, so I haven't thought too much about next year. I would rather not comment on that. I just wanna say that a guy like this is always someone that you'd consider.