After Team Spirit completely failed their performance at IEM Cologne 2024, losing both of their matches and finishing last in the tournament, we had the opportunity to speak with Danish analyst and commentator Jacob Pimp Winneche.
Jacob Winneche shared his perspective on the situation with Team Spirit, potential solutions to the problem, and much more.
Interview was taken and written by Sam "AN1MO" McKenzie
Why did donk struggle in Cologne?
I think donk struggled here in Cologne because the team struggled. I don't know what it is, because it's hard to say, but sometimes you can have a one-off tournament or a couple of games, as I think donk has had more often than not recently when you consider how good he was at the beginning of the year.
He's still young, and inexperienced, and people always tend to believe that when you see something extraordinary happen, like with the World Cup in football, they always think Brazil will win because they have the best players. It's the same with donk, when you see him play as well as he did in Katowice, people get this idea that it's going to continue for the rest of his career, and it's never like that.
Look at anything in history, it's very hard to stay on top of your game for a prolonged period. We've even seen it in CS with Astralis have an era, NAVI almost having an era, over time they will decrease and I think the same could be said for donk.
He's now in a hard time and an era where he has to figure out how to bounce back from a rough tournament, and hopefully that will mature him to a point where he will deliver more in the future.
In that sense, do you think he set the bar too high in Katowice and now that people are seeing a more normal level, it's hard for them to figure out how to truly gauge him?
A little bit, I think we're still watching him progress as a player and develop as a player.
The bar he set at Katowice was absolutely outstanding, I've never seen such a strong individual performance in my entire life from a player of that age with that inexperience.
For him to set the bar that high and then come into a normal world now where he has to realise that it can't be like that every time, that can be tough mentally.
Yes, he's a victim of his own success, but, at the end of the day, everyone with a brain should understand that you can't do it every time and you've got to give him some time to learn and grow.
Do you think teams have adapted to him? One round that always sticks out is against FaZe at the PGL Major Copenhagen, FaZe had a low-buy round and they sent three people Underpass on Mirage knowing that donk would peek them, do you think people have begun to understand how he plays?
I think so. Whenever you have a team popping off, whenever you have an individual popping off, all eyes will be on that team or that player.
That's when you have to innovate yourself more, you have to counter your own way of playing so that you don't get so easy to read.
For donk's sake, he's been so great individually that when people are trying to punish him and when they're making the right strategic move to do so, he's been at the individual level to stop them.
As soon as you drop down to a normal level, that's when you see the issues we're seeing with donk right now.
What about Spirit as a whole in Cologne? They never really looked up for it and Mauisnake tweeted about it as well, what do you think was up with them?
It's a good question. I think we saw signs of it in Copenhagen a week ago at BLAST Premier Fall Groups, they just barely beat Complexity in a BO3, they did not play well.
They were struggling to figure out their map pool, they were trying to pick different maps and they even said in some of those interviews that they are experimenting a little bit coming into Cologne.
I thought to myself then that those were worrying signs, but maybe it's a good idea to experiment now so that they could be there for Cologne.
To be really honest, I don't know what exactly happened to Spirit, and I don't think the players themselves know.
I think zont1x said it well coming into the game yesterday when he said they "gave up" against The MongolZ. If you're the best team in the world, or at least, contesting to be the best in the world and you're giving up in a game against The Mongolz then there's something internally int he team that isn't clicking right now.
Whether that is mental things or a lack of confidence, whether it's tiredness from being good, or maybe, and we don't know this, there could be conflicts within the team with certain players not getting along, who knows? But something is definitely off.
I think it'll be interesting to follow them in upcoming tournaments and see how they fare, but for now, Cologne stands as a big, big disappointment when you consider what happened in Katowice and they were flying at an all-time high.
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