m1N1: "I believe in JiJieHao and I believe in this roster, that’s all that matters"

JiJieHao has had a stellar run at the eXTREMESLAND 2024, having not dropped a single map yet as they sit in the final four. The Middle-Eastern mix team is also the highest rated team at the event post the quarter-finals as they have made people take note of themselves and put themselves as proper contenders.

After sending SemperFi home and booking their semi-final berth, JiJieHao's m1n1 spoke to Dust2 India about the quarter-final, Middle-Eastern Counter-Strike and more.

You picked up the slack after a slow start and your reads on the T-side was spot on on Inferno, what was your game plan?

So basically we knew that they like to play aggressive Counter-Strike, like they won many rounds on Inferno by rushing A, it sometimes worked but then we knew (we) picked Inferno at the end of the day because we have really good counter strats.

JijieHao has been going through a lot of roster changes over the past couple of years, how have you been coping with these changes? Have you found it challenging to adapt?

Yeah so we’ve had to keep makes changes cause time and time again some stuff happened, I stuck by because I believe in JijieHao and I believe in this roster, that’s all that matters. We do have the right combination now but we need to work more and more because we’re basically a new team.

Two out of the four teams in the semi-finals are Middle Eastern teams. How do you feel about setting this benchmark for Middle-Eastern Counter-Strike at eXTREMESLAND 2024?

I’m really happy for XO, I’m happy to see people from the Middle-East playing good Counter-Strike. They’re my friends and I’m really happy to see them in the same tournament as me. Speaking about playing with friends, it was nice to play against my friends today (ex-teammates), there were no mind games, there was just a lot of mutual respect. We’re very excited for tomorrow, we’re going to fight very hard and try our best.