zehN: "We only wanted to come here to blend as a team"

Following Seed's victory over Tricked in the quarter-finals of the ROG Masters EMEA Finals, we caught up with Jesse "zehN" Linjala to get to know his views on the tournament so far and the recent changes to the team.

Seed got off to a great start at their first event with the new roster, beating Tricked in a close three-map series to progress to the semi-finals, in which they will take on Major champions Gambit.

zehN and co. have are in the semis of the ROG Masters EMEA Finals

In the interview below, Jesse "⁠zehN⁠" Linjala discusses the series against Tricked, his team's preparation for the tournament, and also his views on the departures of Miikka "⁠suNny⁠" Kemppi and Kevin "⁠HS⁠" Tarn when the team still played as PENTA. 

The first map of the series you just played was Train, and you were winning 8-0, but then you could not win more than three rounds until the end of the match. What do you think that happened?

With this line-up, we had played Train only twice in practices and never in official matches. So when we were leading 8-0, everything was simple, everything felt fluid, but then our opponent adapted to what we were doing. We are all experienced players, but we ran out of ideas because we did not have anything to use against them.

As CT, we won the first gun round, then we lost the second one even though we had clear vision that they were coming inside and we had like three men there. But since we do not have the experience as a team yet, we still do not know how to put ourselves into the right spots.

What about Cobblestone? It was your map pick, but you ran into some problems, you only closed it out in overtime.

Yes, we started out strongly, like on Train, but we kind of hit a brick wall. We took a few timeouts, we started to think what we could do better and what our opponents were doing, and then we just did a fast recap and started to do what we felt like would be the best option for the situation.

On Mirage, you switched sides with a 8-7 lead. Was that comforting, especially given the fact that you were about to play as CTs? What experience do you have on the map?

We have had the worst results ever. on Mirage We have lost every officials that we have played on that map in ESEA. So, before the game we just thought that it would be the hardest map of the three, but that we would just go into the game and do a simple game with a little bit of FPL-style. That worked out somehow.

What about your preparation for this tournament, how was it?

We only wanted to come here to blend as a team because we had not met each other – Spiidi and denis are totally new guys for me. Our main goal was to come here and have fun, get to know each other, and just play to see how it goes.

It is obvious that the departures of HS and suNny affected your team. How is the core trio adapting to these changes?

We kind of knew that we had to look for really experienced players like denis and Spiidi to replace suNny and HS, who are really strong players. Even though Spiidi has not been playing a lot recently, we know that we can have the firepower. We still use me as support, kRYSTAL is still in-game leading, innocent is kind of support and sometimes lurker, and it seems like denis and Spiidi are really hitting their shots, so we will put them in the front to do the damage.

What about you individually, what did you feel when HS and suNny left?

I do not know, but mixed feelings. Either you are happy that they will go far and have so-called better opportunities, but then you think of the good run we had and how far we could have got. Still, you can not blame them for wanting better opportunities.

Although mousesports are on the other side of the bracket, what would your approach to a potential match against them be? 

I think they are a really strong team, but they also have some free style in their game. So maybe it could fit us on some level, but you never know because they have a lot of more experience together.

To finish it off, what would qualifying for the finals mean to you?

It would be surprising, for starters. It would mean that somehow we played good here, even though we have been struggling online so much.

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