dexter: “xertioN is a very mature player, he’s not just waiting for my guidance”

As day two at the IEM Rio Major Challengers Stage reached series play, MOUZ became the first team to advance through to the Legends Stage after beating Outsiders, Evil Geniuses, and fnatic to go 3-0 in the Swiss format.

Following the series victory against fnatic, Christopher “⁠dexter⁠” Nong spoke to HLTV.org in an interview about his team’s comfortable run and confidence heading into the next stage.

The Australian in-game leader was full of praise when speaking about the newest addition to the team, Dorian “⁠xertioN⁠” Berman, who played an amazing Major debut as he averaged a 1.41 rating across the five maps MOUZ have played in Rio so far. ” I think he’s a really amazing player,” he said about the Israeli youngster. “A very mature player in the sense that he’s not just waiting for my guidance.”

You can watch the full interview above or read the full transcript below:

Congratulations on making it through to the Legends Stage. A 3-0 record, pretty comfortable.

Yeah, feels good, the first time ever making it so cleanly through a Major, so can’t be anything but happy.

How much confidence does this fill you with heading into the second stage after not really having any stumbles? Every game you guys played apart from this last series where you lost a map to fnatic has been pretty comfortable so far, so are you confident heading into the next stage?

Yeah, I think we’re really comfortable because what we really focused on was playing calm CS, and the fact that we won this event playing this type of CS rather than the struggle of a CS at the RMR really puts everyone’s skills and composure into perspective.

I wanted to ask you about xertioN and what you think about how he’s performed. It’s his first Major, it hasn’t been too long since he’s joined the team, and he’s showing up to this level at his first appearance.

I think he’s a really amazing player, a very mature player in the sense that he’s not just waiting for my guidance. He’s asking like, “what’s going on?” or “what can we do better?” and I can easily fix those solutions, it gives me problems to fix, which is really nice.

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xertioN: “dexter has done a really amazing job at telling me ‘be free'”

How much have you worked hands on with him? We talked to him and he thought he wasn’t super comfortable in the first week, he needed more freedom, more space from you, so how was that from your point of view?

Yeah, I kinda have talks with everyone, so if people aren’t feeling comfortable, I’ll often put away a lot of time after practice like 5-6 hours for an entire week, just making sure that maybe we can try this style and change their mindset so they feel more comfortable. I’m glad that he’s playing well.

You have a lot of young guys on your roster. frozen is, funnily enough, kind of considered the veteran even though he’s obviously still very young. How do you look at how the young guys have been able to live up to this kind of standard?

Just really good because right now with the MOUZ organization, we’ve brought on a lot of people and these people are very mature, they kind of have their own influences with their lifestyle, with everything, so it’s just not me or other players influencing each other. It’s the whole team as a unit, everyone’s kind of chiming in to make sure we sleep good, eat good, everything like that. When you’re young, you don’t really think about those things, and we’re doing those things right, so I’m happy with that.

You’ve played a few of these stages but never anything as noisy as this. How has it been enjoying this atmosphere and even getting to play on the stage for one of the matches that you played?

It’s been crazy. I’ve never seen anything like this. I don’t know, it’s better than anything, I don’t know. I’m just so happy to be here.