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skinhub2025-04-20 01:40:423676

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We caught up with Mathieu "Maniac" Quiquerez on the final day of DreamHack Open Denver to discuss LDLC's performance in the tournament, the team's most recent addition, and their failure to qualify to the Europe Minor.

Mathieu "⁠Maniac⁠" Quiquerez and LDLC had the misfortune of running into the buzzsaw of MOUZ — winning only ten rounds against the European side across three maps this event. In between those losses, LDLC played a close series against the new-look NRG, in which they came back from first-half deficits on both maps to take the series 2-0.

Maniac says LDLC inexplicably lost their form at the worst moment

Your tournament ended with a rough defeat at the hand of mousesports. Was there ever a thought of playing Train against them (like you did versus NRG), given that they had thrashed you on Nuke earlier in the event?

No, playing Train against mousesports was never an option, we knew that they were pretty good on the map. We decided together to leave Mirage open instead of Train, and we were surprised they didn't pick it. Obviously, they had a plan, and that plan worked pretty well.

Did you have an opportunity to make changes on Nuke between that first match and yesterday?

Not really, first we mainly played CT the first day that they played, and we got destroyed by their T-side. We had the feeling that we could play again and it would turn out differently, we knew the mistakes we had made. We thought that if we fixed them it would go better. We started T [yesterday], and we didn't really expect them to be as powerful as they were on CT.

You recently failed to advance to the Europe Minor, how difficult was that for you as a team, and how are you moving forward?

It was a very hard moment, we were all very frustrated, we feel that two weeks ago we were in a pretty good place, we had some good maps in Pro League and felt we were improving a lot. Then we hit a very hard week, for no apparent reason we played extremely bad for a week, and the Minor qualification happened at this time. We all agree that we didn't play on our level, and that is a shame. But there is nothing to do about it, it is behind us now. We just have to focus on the future.

You left Rogue in October of last year, and then floated around in the wilderness for awhile before joining LDLC. Can you talk about any potential opportunities you had in the interim, and what made you decide on LDLC?

To be honest I didn't have any very big opportunities, if I did I would have seized them. I really wanted to play. Most of the time I was trying to build something out of nowhere with free agent players. I tried to build lineups, it never really worked out. When LDLC asked me it was pretty obvious to me, I've played with Kévin "Ex6TenZ" Droolans for a long time, I know I appreciate playing with him. By then, they were doing pretty well, all I wanted was to play in a team with potential and professionalism. They had everything to offer, so it was an obvious choice for me.

You have ESWC coming up, what do you think of that event — it is obviously much smaller than it has been in the past.

I think regardless how big the event is, and no matter the prize, what will be important for us is to show a different face than we did here. There were some good points, we came back against NRG, we stayed in it and played great CT sides. We just want to play another event and do it better. We are not a very LAN-experienced team, it is very hard in top-tier CS to go to those events, you have to go through many qualifiers. We have fallen short very often. We made "rookie" team mistakes here, because of how few events we have been to. I think our main objective will just be to play better, to see improvement from LAN A to LAN B.

You replaced Valentin "mistou" Balbastro with Timothée "DEVIL" Démolon in June, can you talk about how he has integrated into the team, and what he brings to the team?

I think DEVIL is integrating really well, we appreciate him a lot. He is someone with a lot of energy, a lot of ideas. He has a vision of the game and helps Ex6TenZ with the calling, comes up with new ideas of things we can do. He takes it on himself to do that, which helps the team a lot. I think he improved the team when he joined, so for me adding him has been very positive.

Can you talk about what coach Julien "Krav" Hernandez does for the team, since he is somewhat unknown to the community at large?

Krav's main input is mostly analytical jobs. He does a very good job helping us prepare for teams and works a lot. He also helps us stay cool, he is someone we respect a lot. He is like a father figure and calms us down. When it comes to in-game decisions, I think Ex6TenZ has a pretty good grip on it, Krav doesn't touch that so much.