Going from Cowana to the BIG academy team and now the main team, Karim “Krimbo” Moussais heralded as one of the greatest players to come out of Germany, consistently putting up numbers online and on LAN against some of the best players in the world, and is one of the main reasons for BIG’s recent success. Freddie “GrimyRannarr” Pritchard was able to chat to the German youngster about what it is like to play alongside such as Johannes “tabseN” Wodarz and Fatih “gob b” Dayik as well as how well he is handling the busy schedule and travel between continents.
Firstly how does it feel after that win over FNATIC?
Definitely feeling good after the rough start, it was important to get a good overpass from us on the second map and dominate them which we did. We were almost asleep on the first map so it was good to get back into the game.
With the map veto, was there a level of uncertainty because of the new players? For example with Vertigo, the old FNATIC never played it but the old Copenhagen Flames duo played it a lot. So what did you expect?
They sometimes played it with the old line up, but like you said the old Copenhagen Flames duo played it a lot and especially overpass so we were expecting they would ban Dust 2 like the old roster and so did Copenhagen flames, so these maps were pretty expected.
Looking at the matchup, were you happy you didn’t have to play Heroic?
It was really important to win and not go to the lower brackets, Heroic are waiting for us if we lost and would, for sure, not be easy and so it was good to win this and go to the upper bracket and play on stage. Hopefully we can face them in the finals to prove ourselves and it will generally be a nice match. It is nice to have it in the finals and not in the lower bracket as we are both favourites. It is not nice if one team goes out this early.
Looking at the major, you had a disappointing result, what changed going into Dallas where you saw success and subsequently this event?
We put good performances up at the RMR, and we like to see the major as a fluke, we were not in shape and did not play our game, it just happened I guess. We really worked hard after the major, and at Dallas we showed that we are a consistent team, as some people say that we are a team that had a life tournament, so we want to prove to others and to ourselves that we are good enough and that we can show consistency and go deep into future tournaments.
As a younger player, because of your busy schedule, do you feel overwhelmed or even tired from this much travelling and CS?
Not really, I didn’t know what to expect when travelling this much, going to NA For the first time for 15/16 hours. When we travelled here we went straight into media day so stuff like that was a bit exhausting but overall I would say I am proud of myself to to handle all of this well. I do not feel jet lagged and I handled this situation good, it is a hunger that everyone in our team has keeps the fire alive and so we don’t mind being tired, we just put this aside and are able to go deep into tournaments such as this.
What is the impact that gob b and tabseN have on you?
It is huge, the experience they have and how they have been playing CS so much, travelling the world so much is useful inside the game and outside the game. It does not matter what it is, they can help me with everything, they are two great leaders, especially gob b now coming into our team, things have changed through our team becoming more a team, the impact they both have is insane and without them things wouldn’t be possible.
You mention things have changed, do you think that not much will change until the player break as there isn’t huge amount of in between events for practice?
I do not think that we need the player break, when he came in he just needed a few days, maybe a week or two max to get really into the CS meta as he has been playing VALORANT for one or two years. He is born for this game so everything is natural and he doesn’t need extra time for things to come back. We are using every bit of free time in this tournament and the others to keep evolving. We all know we have to play more, as last week in the seven days, three of them were travel days. We have to play and practice as a team even if we are jet lagged, you have to just focus on the future. On those travel days we have enough free time to be able to relax even though the plane seats are not the best so you just have to give up something to reach the end goal.
