cadiaN about Astralis : “We're fairly happy with the progress”

BLAST.TV interviewed Casper “ cadiaN ” Møller from Astralis before Blast Open Lisbon 2025.

cadiaN joined Astralis 6 months ago and as a member of the team managed to take two 3rd places at BLAST Premier World Final 2024 and PGL Cluj-Napoca 2025. We have selected the most important player's thoughts on the upcoming tournament and the state of the team.

In an interview, cadiaN shared that he considers 3rd place on PGL Cluj Napoca an important achievement for the team.

It means a lot, now we are very close to securing a direct spot at the Major, being top 10 in Europe . Also, ending as very long stint of non-stop officials with a win was important. The atmosphere in the arena was incredible. The Romanian fans maybe didn't support us in the beginning, but as the tournament progressed, you could feel that the entertainment we had provided through our CS and passion had caused us to grow on them.

Also, cadiaN added that the current ranking system is very sensitive and the concept of a decider for 3rd place fits in well with it.

I think that currently the ranking is very sensitive to wins and losses, so a game like that can be very important to a lot of teams in most scenarios. Also, when there's such a big gap in terms of prize distribution between third and fourth, that's another incentive to play. For us, at least, the intensity was good. It might depend on whatever team is playing and what their approach is, but we had no issues to prepare ourselves mentally for it.

Сasper also answered a question about the individual form of stavn and Jabbi , giving his opinion on the problems with reaching past levels and the impact of players on the team.

I'm doing what I can, not just to facilitate stavn but also the three other players to make sure they feel as comfortable as possible in game. We're trying to create the best environment for everyone to perform, and some players will have one bad tournament and another good one down the line. I trust all the individuals on the team and we're trying to create the best environment for us to reach our potential.

Jabbi brings a lot of great initiative, especially on the communication side of the game. When he's feeling it, he communicates really well and creates a lot of good opportunities for himself and his teammates. You know him as a reliable lurker across the map, punishing aggression, but he's also capable of communicating weaknesses when people are playing too passive. He's a very integral piece to the puzzle of how we want to play and my philosophy of play. He understands it very well, and we're hoping to see even more from him.

cadiaN opinions about the upcoming BLAST Open Lisbon are quite mixed. He doesn't like the group seeding system, but it's also a great opportunity to prepare for tougher opponents

I have mixed feelings. I think that most of the games will be played in the studio, and we're in a very tough group. I'm not a fan of groups being decided based upon the seeding of when you invited the teams, which is like three months ago. We should start using seeding to rank the teams closer to the actual match days. But then again, it's also an opportunity to beat some of the best teams in the world, and that's an opportunity we are looking to seize.We'll take it one game at a time. We have Vitality first, it didn't go too well in our last game against them, but that was also me playing for just five days with the team, so by now we should have more structure and more ability to show what we're capable of.

Astralis will meet Vitality in the group stage of the Blast Open Lisbon 2025 on March 19 at 17:00 CET. The event runs from March 19 to March 30 and will feature 16 teams playing for $400,000.