On the 23rd to 25th of januari, the CS:GO year of 2015 officially kicks off when Major League Gaming, MLG, organize the first international LAN tournament of the year. The tournament is held along Winter X Games 2015, and the location is Aspen, Colorado. A total of eight teams will be present to fight about the $50,000 prize pool. This participant's list includes teams like fnatic, NiP Gaming and the DreamHack Winter 2014 champions of LDLC.

Fragbite has gotten the pleasure to talk with fnatic's Robin "flusha" Rönnquist, who besides the pressure of playing for arguably the best team in the world has been forced to fight cheating accusations and other negativity aimed towards him and his fellow team mates. Beneath this text you'll find the interview, where we will get to know what Rönnquist thinks about the opening of 2015, the Aspen event, the rivalries and all the negativity.

There are only a couple of days left for the first international tournament of the year. In spite of the downfall on DreamHack Winter 2014, you guys ended the year with a win at ESEA. How does your form feel after Christmas and New Year's?

It feels relatively good. Some maps are better and some are worse, but we'll make sure to fix it during the finals days so we feel solid on the maps we play. Other than that, I guess we've shown the same kind of results in practice as we did before we had our break.

You and LDLC fought about being number one in the world, and LDLC won DreamHack. In spite of this, you're still ranked as number one. Do you feel like the best team in the world right now, and do you feel like you're entering 2015 as "favourites"?

I don't really feel like we're entering as the best team in the world. We're about 4 or 5 teams who are amongst the best in the world, and we have all shown great form in the beginning of 2015.

This debut of 2015 is organized in connections with Winter X Games 2015, a bit unusual combination of events. What are your expectations on the event itself, as well as your stay in Aspen?

It's gonna be a lot of fun to go to more of an unusual place, and more luxurious I'd say. The expectations are pretty high since it's X-Games, but that could also mean problems will occur as they're doing e-sports for the first time(?) and might not know everything about it. We'll hope that there aren't any bigger delays or other problems.

Looking at the tournament, you guys got drawn into "the group of death", as it's called, together with LDLC, CLG (ex-mouseSpaz) and ex-iBUYPOWER. What's your take on the group? Do you feel that it's positive or negative to get a tough group to then get an "easier" way in the playoffs?

I don't think it's a "group of death" since there are two favourites to advance, and two American teams who just are on a lower level than the European teams. I think we and LDLC will advance, but it's scary with BO1's and that everyone plays each other in the group stage. One mistake and you could risk elimination. Regarding the "easier" way in the playoffs, I don't think that's possible. The way I see it, the four European teams will advance from the group stage, and all of those teams are on about the same level, so it doesn't really matter if we place first or second in the group, we'll still have to beat everyone to win.

As it's the first tournament of the year, do you feel more or less pressure to play well?

About the same pressure as we've always felt, I think. There's no difference.

Fnatic vs. LDLC is still the biggest meeting right now, but your matches against Ni PGaming shouldn't go unmentioned. You haven't played against NiP at LAN since you lost to them in the grand final of ESL One Cologne, and you haven't played LDLC since the highly discussed game at DreamHack. Who do you look forward to meeting the most, and who would you like revenge on the most?

NiP is probably the team I look forward to meeting the most, mostly because we hadn't reached our high potential in Cologne, and it'll be fun to see how that match would go. LDLC is more of a revenge game, we want to beat them to show people that we are the better team.

You have personally been the most discussed player in the last couple of month, after cheating accusations in what can only be called a witch hunt. This kind of focus affects people in different ways. How do you feel that it affected your own performance during DreamHack and ESEA? Did you feel different prior to the tournaments than during them?

I didn't feel anything in particular before DreamHack, a little nervous when we started playing the first game, but the more we played the more I got calm. My performance didn't change too much I think. The fact that we lost to HellRaisers was frustrating since I couldn't even recognize our own game compared to how we usually play. We played cowardly and didn't dare to play the way we use to, and because of that we placed second in our group and got to play LDLC, and that ended the way it did.

Before ESEA we barely played anything, so there wasn't anything to to talk about. We didn't think anything about the "witch hunt" before that either, and my performance wasn't anything special. Sure, we won, but we almost lost to Titan and we lost a BO3 against Virtus.pro. If we had gone to ESEA with the same focus and training, we could have gone through that tournament 8-0, but I gotta say that we didn't care at all.

Now you've had some time to handle the circus around you. Do you feel like you're back on track, and have you learned to handle all the negativity?

Yes, I'd say so. I think we've come back from all the negativity and we keep learning that we shouldn't care too much about what the community say. But it's sad that people will give me more crap, because I guess it's there's gonna be a lot of writing when I get listed on HLTV's top 20. Other than that, I feel like I should thank the people who still believe in us and keep rooting for us.

We'll see fnatic and the other seven teams play MLG X Games Aspen during januari 23rd to 25th. Fragbite will be on site to cover the $50,000 tournament in the best way possible, so keep your eyes and ears open during the week.