f0rest: "The Swedish players lack in grind that the Danes have"

Patrick "f0rest" Lindberg, a player of Dignitas, spoke about the decline of the Swedish CS:GO scene in an interview with Pley.gg. According to the 33-year-old esports athlete, Sweden's dominant position at the global level has been lost due to the wrong approach to career development among a new generation of players who are trying to get into a top-notch roster without sufficient experience of playing in a team.

The Swedish players feel kind of entitled because Sweden always has been presented as one of the best nations in Counter-Strike. Because of that, some people expect to be a great star player right off the bat and to join an already tier-1 team. But people are not fighting together as a team to reach that goal collectively.

The quality and the grind that Danish players are doing, is what’s lacking in Sweden. The Swedish scene hasn’t really committed to the lower-tier teams in the way Denmark has, where teams have stuck together and made the grind to reach the top.

What Denmark does right, is that they nurture and have a lot of really strong teams in lower-tiers that grind their way up towards the higher ends. Heroic for instance, they came from battling in tier-2 to now being a stable Top 5 team in the world <...> At the end of the all, we just need to see more Swedish teams stick together longer and actually grind and try to make it work.

At the same time, f0rest noted the important role of NIP in the development of the Swedish CS:GO scene by attracting young players from their academy to the main roster.

NIP is doing something right with giving LNZ a shot, being a young player from Young Ninjas and now has won IEM Fall. That will hopefully give some motivation for younger Swedish players to see that it’s possible.

That grind, where you develop at a certain pace and get a feel out for the game is a healthy way of doing it, in my opinion. Jackinho and the Young Ninjas players on NIP have been thrown into tier-1 competition and are expected to deliver results right off the bat.

I think the future of Swedish Counter-Strike looks brighter than it has in the last few years. There are a lot of upcoming talents who are beginning to pop up within the scene, and it feels like the Swedish CS:GO has got reignited and realized "Hey, we are not so bad after all".

Only 5 Swedish players will compete at the upcoming PGL Major, which will be held from October 26 to November 7 in Stockholm, making it one of the lowest representation of Swedish players in the Major events’ history.

Origin: youtu.be