mertz has a point to prove in CSGO return: \u201cThere are a lot of things to fight for\u201d Adela Sznajder\/DreamHackDaniel \u2018mertz\u2019 Mertz\u2019s CS:GO career has not been what many projected it to be. As he returns to the game after a Valorant sojourn, he is confident that he can still realize his potential. mertz vividly remembers the moment his career began to lose pace. In a July 2018 interview with HLTV.org, then North captain Mathias \u2018MSL\u2019 Lauridsen explained mertz\u2019s removal from the team days earlier with the need to have an AWPer that could \u201ckill a lot and play smart\u201d. That billing of a player who was \u2018all aim and no brain\u2019 has stuck with him in the years since and is still frequently brought up by the CS:GO community every time his name is mentioned. It was, mertz acknowledges, \u201ca punch to the stomach\u201d, though he says it was not entirely unwarranted. His undoing was his attitude towards the game and the fact that he took his career \u201ca little bit for granted\u201d \u2014 something he did not realize until years later. \u201cI was a much less mature guy back then, and I think I had a lot of other priorities,\u201d he tells Dexerto. \u201cMaybe I wasn\u2019t taking things as seriously as I should have or putting in the hours that I should.\u201d After a nine-month spell with Heroic that was ended by a last-place finish at IEM Sydney, mertz suddenly found the doors to tier-one Counter-Strike closed to him. So he took a step back and moved to smaller teams. He played for Singularity, Copenhagen Flames and x6tence, putting up solid numbers every time. But in a stunning turn of events, the Spanish organization decided to drop the team just two months after his arrival. By the time he joined Nordavind in February 2021, he had grown increasingly disillusioned with the game. That summer, Nordavind put all their chips on the Brazilian market, merging with 00 Nation and signing the team known as O PLANO. Tired of \u201cwaiting for things to happen\u201d after a string of negative experiences, mertz decided to try his luck in Valorant, landing a spot on Team Heretics, one of the biggest names in the EMEA region in the game\u2019s infancy. But by then, Heretics had become a revolving door of players; his tenure with the Spanish organization lasted under three months. mertz said that he never found his footing in the game, something he partly attributes to the confluence of players from different paths, which made it harder to find a common ground. At the same time, he harbored a feeling of unfinished business in the CS:GO scene. So he decided to give the game another chance. \u201cI didn\u2019t feel quite at home in Valorant,\u201d he explains. \u201cI was missing Counter-Strike. My good old Counter-Strike.\u201d A fresh start mertz is determined to fight back to the top of the CS:GO scene from the bottom. He has joined The Prodigies, an academy team assembled by Prodigy Agency, the Toulouse-based talent agency that represents some of the best esports players in the world. J\u00e9r\u00f4me Coupez, the founder and owner of Prodigy Agency, wants this project to serve as a platform for up-and-coming talent to showcase their ability. (All players receive a salary and access to coaching and training facilities.) He has hired a production company and professional casters to cover The Prodigies\u2019 league games, bringing more eyeballs to the team. VODs and highlights are also posted on YouTube after every match. Last season, The Prodigies moved up the ladder as they secured promotion from ESEA Intermediate to Main. (The team was even one match away from climbing up to the Advanced division.) It\u2019s a different reality from what mertz is used to, but at the same time, it\u2019s the perfect atmosphere for a player in his situation to regain his best form. \u201cIt should be beneficial for both parties,\u201d he explains. \u201cI can teach the younger talents and they will give me the chance to show that I\u2019m still good.\u201d After three months in which his days were spent playing FACEIT pugs (not even FPL, from which he was kicked for inactivity when he moved to Valorant), mertz is ecstatic to be in a team environment again. He believes that he still needs some time to shake off the rustiness, saying that he feels at \u201c75 percent\u201d of his best self. \u201cThere\u2019s some stuff I need to catch up on,\u201d he adds. \u201cI haven\u2019t played on a team for over a year. That\u2019s a long time out of the game.\u201d mertz doesn\u2019t put a timetable on finding a top team again, but he said that he hopes to be ready by the time the next big shuffle in the CS:GO scene comes around, which will happen at the end of the current Major cycle. He also sees the irony of his situation. He went to another game to find the opportunities that were in short supply in the CS:GO scene, only to watch Astralis, Denmark\u2019s biggest team, experiment with different AWPers during his time away, without success. \u201cI definitely think I could have carried on and reached bigger heights, but I was also doubtful at the time that it would happen,\u201d he says. \u201cLooking at what Astralis have been through, maybe I could have got a chance there if I was performing well. \u201cMaybe you can say that mistakes were made, but I still feel that I\u2019m coming back refreshed.\u201d With mertz, it always comes back to the same theme. Can he finally live up to the potential that many saw in him in 2018, or will he always be seen as an example of wasted talent? He has heard all the noise over the years. And while he admitted that proving his doubters wrong does \u201cfuel the fire\u201d in him, he insisted that his main target is to finally reach the level he knows he can play at. \u201cI think I have barely achieved anything,\u201d he says of his career. \u201cI have played on some big teams with some big names, but I have never won a big tournament. So I think I still have a lot to achieve and that there are a lot of things to fight for. \u201cYou want to show people that you are not what they think you are, but most of my motivation comes from within and from knowing that I could have been more but didn\u2019t do myself justice. Now I can grind and hopefully, at the end of this, I\u2019ll look at myself and say, \u2018I did what I wanted with this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
mertz has a point to prove in CSGO return: \u201cThere are a lot of things to fight for\u201d Adela Sznajder\/DreamHackDaniel \u2018mertz\u2019 Mertz\u2019s CS:GO career has not been what many projected it to be. As he returns to the game after a Valorant sojourn, he is confident that he can still realize his potential. mertz vividly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}