In an interview with Pley.gg, the Swedish in-game leader talks about how he adapts to his new role, his persona, and what he is working on to improve.

– This MOUZ team will do badly. Brollan is not an in-game leader. They will have a lot of difficulties this season. I almost just see this whole roster as a stop-gap before they get a new in-game leader in June or July.

– Mauisnake, analyst, January 26th, 2025 on a BLAST broadcast.

The reaction of the community was a mix of surprise and skepticism after MOUZ announced Ludvig “Brollan” Brolin as Kamil “siuhy” Szkaradek’s replacement as the new in-game leader for the German-based organization. A reaction that the 22-year-old Swede doesn’t have a problem with.

– I understand that maybe people think that I was not a perfect fit for it, but there are a lot of things going on behind the scenes, and I’ve always been the guy who is coming up with ideas.

“I’ve always been a quiet guy”

Since their early exit at the BLAST Bounty 2025 Season 1 tournament, MOUZ has drastically improved to reach three Grand Finals in a row (PGL Cluj-Napoca, ESL Pro League Season 21, and BLAST Open Lisbon 2025) under the reign of their new Swedish in-game leader.

A feat that has catapulted MOUZ back into the conversation of being the best team in the world, currently only surpassed by Vitality. A remarkable journey for the young in-game leader, who has turned haters into believers for his way of handling his new role.

When watching Brollan from the outside, it’s easy to understand the initial doubt about whether he was the right man for the job in an era where some of the most successful in-game leaders are prolific characters like Dan “apEX” Madesclaire, Finn “karrigan” Andersen, and Casper “cadiaN” Møller.

– I understand people that they see me as a quiet guy. I have always been a quiet guy basically. Maybe not in the fnatic days when I was in a Swedish lineup. There I was always the guy with the most energy. I’m a Swede basically and we don’t show that much emotions. I have the mindset to just be focused on the game and not show that much emotion. So it’s been working for me in the past. But yeah, when I went to the IGL role, I felt like I needed to show a little bit more energy,” he notes before adding.

– I’ve always been the guy who’s speaking basically behind the scenes or in the game or whatever it is. Maybe not just as much to media because in the past my English hasn’t been that good. It’s been improving a lot in the past years. Before I was pretty nervous going into media days because I was just choking in interviews.

Decline in rating

Ludvig “Brollan” Brolin’s first 100 days in charge of MOUZ is just around the corner, and it is very obvious looking at the stats, that a lot has changed for the Swede.

The decline in the rating is something that the former NIP and fnatic player is still adjusting to mentally.

– I have always been the guy who has good stats in past teams, and I just needed to switch the mentality that I need to perform. I do think I’m underperforming a little bit at the moment, but I need to sacrifice a lot for the team. When I switched to the leader role, I felt like I just needed to switch the mindset that I need to help the team more to perform.

– But yeah, I’m trying to work on it. I’ll try to work on it as much as I can because there’s a lot of time spent watching demo reviews, with how to think about the game, how to improve our playbook, and you actually forget how much you need to play individually. It’s just something, I really want to improve on.

IGL for life?

In the past year, we’ve seen several prolific and highly regarded players take over the in-game leader role. Russel “Twistzz” Van Dulken and Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz both spend less than a year in charge of their respective teams before being relieved of the IGL duty.

Will Brollan fall into the same category or will the IGL role be his for the rest of his career?

– How I want to be in the future and these things are not something, I think about. I’m not the guy who is trying to think about it too much, because then I start overthinking this thing, so I don’t like it. Both Liquid and Astralis didn’t have that good of results if I say so. So I think it was pretty understandable that they felt like they needed some changes.

For MOUZ, the next job is at IEM Melbourne in a week. Here MOUZ can build upon the impressive line of results, where Vitality has been the only team in their past 17 matches that were able to beat MOUZ.

– We are coming closer and closer. I mean we’ve got stomped three times and then in the Grand Final we actually got the match point. We are going try to improve on everything we are doing and we will beat them in the end. Our playbook is really good and I feel like the team is just really, really good for my calling and it’s really easy to work with them. The results have been really going well, and we just need to improve on things like our map pool for example and we’ll see how it goes in the next tournaments.

MOUZ takes on Complexity in their opening match in Melbourne next week.