phzy: "I just want to hopefully get back into form, these last months have been pretty rough"

The Swedish AWPer is feeling optimistic about his future in Astralis.

Astralis ' newest members Gytis "⁠ryu⁠" Glušauskas and Love "⁠phzy⁠" Smidebrant began the year well, but both cooled off slightly as the season reached its conclusion at the Cologne Major.

After putting up a 1.27-rated performance on the decider against paiN in the BLAST Bounty S2 quarter-finals, phzy admitted that the bad run of form took a toll on his confidence after some harsh feedback.

"I like hearing when I make mistakes or stuff like this, that's the way you improve, right? So I think that's fine, but yeah, maybe it's been a bit much," he admitted.

"Maybe I've gotten a little bit too passive, or not necessarily scared, but subconsciously scared."

He also spoke about the team's mentality, the fluctuation of his form depending on maps, and his expectations for Saturday's semi-final.

Congrats. It was quite a long game with loads of overtimes. How do you feel after closing it out in the end?

Feels very good, I think also for my own confidence, I guess, it was very nice to start dominating a little bit on the third map. I just want to hopefully get back into form, these last months have been pretty rough for me. So yeah, it feels very good, and I'm feeling hopeful as well.

About your form, HooXi said in a broadcast interview that he has been too harsh on you previously. What's your take on that?

Yeah, maybe. I like hearing when I make mistakes or stuff like this, that's the way you improve, right? So I think that's fine, but yeah, maybe it's been a bit much. Maybe I've gotten a little bit too passive, or not necessarily scared, but subconsciously scared, if that makes sense. So maybe he's onto something there, I don't know.

During Cologne especially, we saw some TeamSpeak outtakes where you kind of, maybe not tilted at each other, but were unhappy with each other. Is that something you really tried to improve during this off-season especially, considering you signed a new psychologist? Was that a big focus?

Yeah, it's something we're trying to work on, but also striving for more consistency, because I feel like last season we had good ups and low downs. I guess those kind of go hand-in-hand a little bit. So yeah, both of those are big focuses.

You seem like one of those players that enjoys some maps very much and kind of struggles with others. For example, Nuke is very low-rated for you, and then Inferno is very high, which is kind of strange for an AWPer. Is that something you're trying to work on?

Yeah, I think so. For my past teams it was always one of our picks, Inferno. But yeah, it's something I'm aware of, something we're looking at, especially with MiGHTYMAX, our analyst.

Sometimes the answer is a little bit hard, I think for Nuke especially, since in general my T sides are a little bit better, and Nuke can be a little bit NPC for the AWPer on the T side. Just playing a lot of set rounds, throwing nades, then jumping down the ladder to Lobby and already holding you from the Ramp push. I think there's a lot of ways to look at it.

You also signed a new coach during the off-season, and everyone was kind of talking about how you want to return to the style that you had previously in the year. What is the biggest thing that NEO brought into the team?

He's come with a lot of positivity, a lot of good vibes so far. We haven't been working that much, but obviously he's done more than that too on the bootcamp for example, contributing with strats. Especially on Cache, having like another old head kind of look at that map since it hasn't been in the map pool for a long time. I think it's been good so far, it feels nice to have him with us.

To ask about the draft that's happening right now. This interview is going out after the draft, so you can reveal who you will pick. How do you feel about that match-up tomorrow?

I'm not entirely sure. I think we will pick MOUZ, but to be honest, I'd rather play Spirit. I feel like they're a very good match for me, especially with how I want to play as an AWPer. Even though they're all very good individually, it can be very easy to read them at times, because they want to play good CS, kind of defaulty, and I think that's where an AWP can shine and take over the game.

But the Spirit game would be at around 12:00, so we'd probably have to wake up at 8:00 or 9:00. And with finishing a game and drinking Red Bulls and everything you have to do to win a three-mapper with overtimes, I think it's just not possible, to be honest. So probably we'll play MOUZ. I think they've been looking a little bit shaky, which is understandable, they have some new players, but we'll see what happens.