Astralis is arguably one of the best Counter-Strike teams of all-time, especially after their 2018 run to stardom. The team has come under intense scrutiny, however, following its decisions to skip multiple big events for BLAST Pro Series. Astralis’ coach Danny ‘zonic’ Sørensen is now publicly defending those decisions in a recent statement.
“My absolute first priority as a coach and a leader is and has always been to make sure my players do well, that they work as a group taking care of each other and that they have a healthy and as long a career as possible,” Zonic said.
The statement echoes many of the sentiments Zonic shared with Dot Esports in an interview earlier this month. “Astralis is prioritizing Astralis. Period,” Zonic said at the time.
In today’s statement, Zonic also explained the reasoning for the team opting out of events like IEM Sydney and season seven of StarSeries. There were multiple factors to their absence, including “standard of the tournament, possibilities to prepare, prestige, how the geography fits into our general travel plans, our previous results in the tournament, seeing the fans and our experience with relevant tournament organizers.”
He also said that, due to the closeness of ECS season seven and the ESL Pro League season nine finals, they opted to miss DreamHack Masters Dallas. “We are back to back champions of both ECS and EPL and would love to give ourselves the best option of trying to defend those titles,” Zonic said.
After Team Liquid’s win at Dreamhack Masters Dallas, Astralis’ streak of being the number one team in the HLTV rankings was broken. They were the first team to hold the number one spot for an entire year, but Zonic says that their priorities now are to win the “biggest and the right tournaments.”
We will finally see Astralis in action when the team attends the ECS season seven finals on Thursday, June 6.
Published: Jun 5, 2019 12:31 pm