es3tag explains what went wrong in Cloud9: We had some players who couldn't realize their mistakes
The Danish rifler reveals his reasons why the project ended up so lacklustre, where he did not hold back when speaking about Özgür “woxic” Eker.
There were a lot of expectations and hype from the CS:GO community when Cloud9 announced the creation of their so-called ‘Colossus’ roster.
With Henry “HenryG” Greer and his pioneering way of running a team added with the signings of an experienced IGL Alex “ALEX” McMeekin, a superstar AWPer in Özgür “woxic” Eker and Patrick “es3tag” Hansen on the rifle, what could go wrong?
Yeah, so why did this project end up being the failure it was?
That’s something es3tag has opened up about in a recent podcast called “Ace – a CS:GO podcast”, pointing towards several key factors including ego issues from a certain Turkish player.
- The project started a bit rocky because woxic did not perform very well on our team, es3tag said in the podcast. He had a playstyle where he always had to make the decisive peek that won us the round. For example, on Inferno where you jump past mid to spot an AWP and then you peek down there immediately. After all, he had been doing that for three years. And fair enough to him, he was a Top-20 player the year before using that peek. But everyone knew that now. But he kept doing it in Cloud9 and he kept getting punished for it. So, it's hard to play CS when you don't realize that what you're doing is so predictable.
es3tag continues:
- If we were going to play around the AWP, we needed someone we could lean on and not someone who is constantly dying and doing things solo. But there was just a cultural difference and language barrier that was difficult to overcome. Communication was not as good as it should be. We spent almost three months [working] on just that. (...) We had some problems from the start because when we worked really hard, we had some players who couldn't really realize their mistakes. And when we sat down and talked about it, they disagreed, even though there were five people saying that it was wrong.
es3tag explains in the podcast that Cloud9 began to show promise and a better level around February and March, in a period where he was playing the AWP. The Dane recalls a particular victory against FURIA at ESL Pro League S13, which provided them with a bit of hope for the future. Nonetheless, it was too late as the organization pulled the plug on the roster a few days later.
- I think it ended too soon. I can kind of understand it, but then again, I can’t. If you have thrown in so much money, then you have to keep it for more than six months, come on. But it was also difficult for me to say yes to Cloud9 in the beginning, and it was solely because of the salary they offered that I chose to join.
A salary that was around $1.4 Million dollars over three years (approx. 9 Mio. DKK), was confirmed in the podcast. The salary was also a topic that es3tag touched on in the podcast.
- If there are such huge salary differences in the team, it may well create some discord. I felt that if I get paid so much more than someone else, I have to work twice as much. Some of the teams and players who were born with a silver spoon in their mouths, don't understand this. They don't understand that there can be discord if you get paid so much more and then you don't work at all.
If you want to hear the entire episode with es3tag then follow one of these links (it's in Danish which means the abovementioned quotes are translated by us).
