As his team is about to face Flipsid3 Tactics for our showmatch, Alexander "LocoEX" Hugo, Managing Director for PENTA Sports, spent some time with us. During this interview, he gave us his feedback on the last event attended by the team, DreamHack Winter.
[M] Laemey : Your team has been created last August, with three players making their first steps on the international CSGO scene. How are they reacting to this whole new world ?
The improvement of the team since we replaced three players is phenomenal. They surprise every time and grow with their duties. We flew to Sweden the day before the DreamHack started and didn’t do any kind of bootcamp before so everyone was really relaxed. Unfortunately we played the group stage matches backstage without any audience, temperatures around 15°C and the PCs on the tables - pretty much with a worse setup than what you have when you play at home. When it came to the quarter-final against Virtus.Pro on the main stage you could see that some of the players were quite impressed and a little bit distracted by the setup but they all loved to be at DreamHack Winter 2014 and are looking forward to attend again in 2015.
What do you think are your team's strengths and weaknesses?
We have a really aim-strong team and their mentality is great. After a lost match they are frustrated for half an hour but then they instantly sit down all together making plans how to improve their game in short- and long term. A weakness might be the lack of international offline experience but that will come with the time and won’t be an issue in the future.You recently managed to qualify for DreamHack Winter, winning against HellRaisers in qualifier. No one was expecting that, but did you think you could beat them when you knew the team you were about to face?
We all know that HellRaisers is a really inconsistent team so you always have a chance when you play against them. We played against them on de_dust2, one of our best maps, and on de_cache, probably their best map. It took us an overtime on de_dust2 to beat them which shows that these have been really close matches. Both teams had the chance to win on that day.
Your DreamHack Winter journey began in group B. This was the first major event for 3 of your players, how did you feel about this event?
As I already said the backstage matches in group B and D seemed pretty unprofessional. Definitely a thing the DreamHack has to improve for the next years. Everybody liked the CS:GO arena and it has been a pleasure to compete there. Another thing is that the Twitch.tv lounge was far away from the stages and the DreamHack didn’t provide any catering to the players like the ESL is used to do. The atmosphere at DreamHack and in Jönköping in general has been pretty sweet. Jönköping isn’t a huge town and most of the hotels are very near to each other, for example we stood in the same hotel like Fnatic and Bravado Gaming, so whenever you went out to grab something to eat you met someone you know.
PENTA Sports made it to DreamHack Winter
You made it through the groups, beating both Copenhagen Wolves and iBUYPOWER. Did you think you could do it when you saw your group?
Yes, definitely. We kind of expected to lose against Dignitas but since Copenhagen Wolves is a pretty new team and iBUYPOWER also replaced two players we knew that we would have a chance to win against them. Both matches have been really close which shows how even the skill level in the group has been.
Your journey ended in quarter final, againt Virtus.Pro. What do you think you team needed to beat them?
Virtus.Pro is one of the most consistent top teams in the world. Their organization just extended the team’s contracts for two more years after DreamHack Winter 2014 which is a statement to the whole scene. We never played them before and it is really hard to predict their tactics in general so we knew that we would need to bring up our A1 performance and the little bit of luck you always need in CS to have a realistic chance against teams like VP. Unfortunately we were not even close to our best performance at that day and made it too easy for Virtus.Pro to reach the semi-finals.
What is your next goal in CS:GO ?
Since we reached the quarter-finals we are directly qualified for the next major even which will probably be Katowice 2015. Further we managed to qualify for all eminent ladders and leagues like StarLadder, ESEA Invite, ESL Pro League and the German ESL Pro Series. Hopefully we’ll now get invited to events like the Hitbox CSArena after we’ve raised some attention in the scene. We are also going to compete in a new offline tournament format coming up the weekend before Christmas here in Germany. More information about this will be revealed soon. At this point I want to thank the Millenium staff for inviting us to play in their ShowMatch series and of course the next major goal for us is to win the Millenium ShowMatch #4!
This interview comes to an end, thanks for answering my questions. The final words belong to you.
First of all I would like to thank the whole team for their impressive performance at DreamHack Winter 2014. All of them are really nice people and it has been a pleasure to Felix "Valias" Gräbeldinger and me to manage them.
I also would like to thank the whole DreamHack crew, Valve and everyone else who made the DreamHack Winter 2014 possible. Last but no least I want to thank everyone at DreamHack and at home in front of the screens who supported us so well and our sponsors Platincasino.com, Antec Deutschland, ARCTIC and Tesoro DACH. Nothing would have been possible without you!My last words go to you, the fans. Feel free to like us on Facebook or join our Steam group to receive the most recent information about our team first. You are what makes us strong!
