Krimbo: "We grew a lot as a team at the Major"

The German rifler believes that his experience at the IEM Rio Major has prepared him to play in front of any crowd.

BIG recently attended IEM Rio Major with Elias "⁠s1n⁠" Stein as a stand-in and made it through the Challengers Stage with a 3-1 record. Josef "⁠faveN⁠" Baumann was unable to attend due to injury, one of many, as stand-ins have become a normality for BIG and they've had to play with nine different rosters at LAN events in the past year alone.

Krimbo spoke about how impressed he was by the crowd in Espoo

Johannes "⁠tabseN⁠" Wodarz and company have performed well at Elisa Masters Espoo so far despite playing with a different roster than in Brazil, as Florian "⁠syrsoN⁠" Rische is not in attendance at Elisa Masters Espoo due to a COVID-19 infection.

The Germans made it through the group stage and took down 500 in the quarter-finals with faveN back in the lineup. Karim "⁠Krimbo⁠" Moussa took some time after their quarter-final bout to talk about how despite the perceived setbacks, having stand-ins only gives him more motivation to play the game ahead of BIG's semi-final against Sprout.

Well done on the win, how are you feeling about facing Sprout in the next round?

Thank you, first of all. We feel pretty confident even though we had some role-swapping and player-swapping from the last event. First, faveN was ill, then s1n came in, then syrsoN is ill and now faveN has come back. The mood in the team is really good, everyone is pretty happy, and we have nice team chemistry. We are really confident for the Sprout match.

What can you take away from the 500 win?

I would say we weren't really in the game, it took us a bit to get into it, it was a bit of a warm-up for the first round because we had some technical issues for about half an hour. So we didn't have that much warmup. We lost both pistols and we lost one eco, then it can always get dangerous on Nuke. We don't take too much out of the game, just on some set strats we did some mistakes in those rounds and we are going to fix that. Nothing special.

Is it hard to find motivation for the game when your roster is constantly changing and you've consistently got stand-ins for each event?

Not really, it's the opposite way I would say. You always get a bit more motivated, especially for me, and I think I can speak for the others as well, when you play with a new player. You know you need to put in extra work now to have a more realistic chance against the other teams who have been playing, for example, with their roster for one year. So it's always a bit of a special experience to have a new personality in the team. I would say the opposite way.

When syrsoN comes back what is the roster going to look like?

We just live in the moment, we have not made any plans yet. We are playing with s1n and faveN and we are enjoying the time a lot here. The rest is a question mark.

We are playing with s1n and faveN and we are enjoying the time a lot here. The rest is a question mark Karim "⁠Krimbo⁠" Moussa

In terms of illnesses, do you feel like your biggest issue is being cursed with bad luck at the moment?

Kind of, but I think at one point every team is going to face it. The corona situation, and overall it's getting to winter now and then there's all the travel and stuff like that. There were also the ACs in the hotels, for example, I know many had issues with that. We are a bit more cursed than other teams, I would say, but in the end every team is going to do some slight changes.

Would you say you have a clear idea, personally, of what BIG's future looks like?

As I said before we are just living in the moment, we want to do everything step by step. The first step is to get consistently back into the top ten, then we consistently make playoffs at big events. We have to probably play the play-in at Katowice, qualify for the main event, and then qualify for the playoffs. Getting to playoffs in such events is the first step and top ten constantly and then we will of course grab for the title, but it's step by step.

s1n has been playing with the main roster since the RMR

Looking back at the Major, you came in with s1n but you still performed well, what were your takeaways from your performances?

I mean we didn't expect to have this run, our first goal was getting to the Legends Stage and then we'll see but when you go 2-0 in the Legends it hurts more if you go 2-3 as we did. We took away a lot of good stuff, but it's difficult to use what we did wrong in that tournament because now we don't have syrsoN and we only had a few days.

When we played FURIA in the best-of-three, that was probably the most insane moment of my life, especially in my CS career Karim "⁠Krimbo⁠" Moussa

We grew a lot as a team, and we played in front of these insane crowds. When we played FURIA in the best-of-three, that was probably the most insane moment of my life, especially in my CS career. Everyone who is there loves CS, it is so loud and they support their team, not even just their team but their country with their heart. I would say we grew as a team. When you have these defeats you grow more than if you had won.

You mentioned the local Brazilian scene and their passion. Looking at your local scene, how do you feel about the state of German CS at the moment?

I would say it's getting worse. Many organisations that have been in German CS for a long time left. There was Unicorns of Love and EURONICS, who were always a top 50 contender. Even now Sprout has gone Danish as well, and there is only aTTaX and BIG Academy left as the big names in the German scene. It's really hard to comprehend, I don't think that these teams can keep the German scene alive. On the other side, it's also hard on the organizations. The corona crisis hit many organizations really hard, so it's not the best time for German CS, especially when you compare it to Brazilian CS, as you just mentioned.

You mentioned in your last interview with HLTV that the next step for you was getting BIG into the top ten. On a smaller scale, what are your goals for this event?

Our goal is to win this event. We said the group stage was pretty hard and we said that if get through the group stage and if we can win the best-of-ones, anything can happen. If you lose two pistols, for example on the Nuke game against 500, you can lose the map if you lose one crucial buy round. We definitely want to win this event and, as I said in the first question, we are really confident against Sprout. I think if a team can make it hard for us, it would have been ENCE. They are here in front of their home crowd, kind of, they had a good run in the last tournament and looked really promising.

It was really surprising that so many people were here and are also enjoying CS and cheering for us Karim "⁠Krimbo⁠" Moussa

You've just come from Rio where the crowd was crazy, when you got to Espoo were you expecting this crowd to be as loud as it was?

We came into this event without any expectations, we came on to the stage today and it was 15:00, so we just expected nobody to be here because everybody is working. It is Friday, maybe later on at the ENCE versus Astralis... It was really surprising that so many people were here and are also enjoying CS and cheering for us, but when you come from Rio with the Brazilian fans you are more relaxed when you play in front of this crowd. It was a good experience, especially for me and s1n, to have this insane crowd in Brazil, going to other tournaments now it can't really beat the crowd in Brazil.

Sprout #21 Ismail 'refrezh' AliFritz 'slaxz-' DietrichRasmus 'Zyphon' NordfossVictor 'Staehr' StaehrLaurențiu 'lauNX' Țârlea 500 #50 Nikolay 'niki1' PantaleevGeorgi 'SHiPZ' GrigorovDenislav 'dennyslaw' DimitrovIvan 'Patrick' IvanovAleks 'Rainwaker' Petrov Florian 'syrsoN' Rische Age: 26 Team: BIG Rating 1.0: 1.09 Maps played: 1771 KPR: 0.73 DPR: 0.63 Johannes 'tabseN' Wodarz Age: 27 Team: BIG Rating 1.0: 1.05 Maps played: 1999 KPR: 0.73 DPR: 0.70 Josef 'faveN' Baumann Age: 22 Team: BIGB Rating 1.0: 1.08 Maps played: 1375 KPR: 0.74 DPR: 0.65 Elias 's1n' Stein Age: 20 Team: BIG Rating 1.0: 1.01 Maps played: 272 KPR: 0.67 DPR: 0.64 BIG #14 Johannes 'tabseN' WodarzFlorian 'syrsoN' RischeNils 'k1to' GruhneKarim 'Krimbo' MoussaElias 's1n' Stein Karim 'Krimbo' Moussa Age: 20 Team: BIG Rating 1.0: 1.05 Maps played: 407 KPR: 0.70 DPR: 0.64

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