In Katowice, CPH Flames are proving Stockholm Major run was no fluke

Copenhagen Flames co-owner and head coach Daniel ‘Vorborg’ Vorborg spoke with Dexerto about the team’s renaissance at IEM Katowice and the failed deal with Complexity.   

As Copenhagen Flames’ players leaped up from their seats in celebration after the final frag against NIP, they took in the moment. They had done it again.

Four months after exceeding even the wildest expectations when they booked a spot in the New Legends Stage of PGL Major Stockholm, they were through to the last-16 stage of another international competition, IEM Katowice.

“They are LANimals,” analyst Sudhen ‘Bleh’ Wahengbam said on the broadcast after the team’s convincing 2-0 victory against NIP.

The accomplishment was made sweeter by the simple fact that NIP had been the team to deny Copenhagen Flames a spot in the Major playoffs and the opportunity to be immortalized in the game via the player signature stickers — reserved for the 40 players who stepped onto the stage of the Avicii Arena.

Yes, they were up against a dev1ce-less NIP, but Copenhagen Flames have shown again that they can wrestle with the best where it matters most, on LAN. They had begun the day by hammering Fnatic 16-7, and they quickly took the lead in the series against NIP with a 16-3 thrashing on Nuke. They still let NIP get back into the game in the second half of Mirage after taking a commanding 13-2 lead but kept their heads and eventually put the game to rest.

It’s a glorious return to the spotlight from the Danish team after they endured a turbulent end to the 2021 season.

A complex affair

Complexity were one of the organizations that expressed an interest in signing Copenhagen Flames’ team following their ‘Cinderella’ run at the Stockholm Major.

In the market for a new team after pulling the plug on the ‘Juggernaut’ project, the North American organization quickly entered into talks with Copenhagen Flames, who were willing to listen to offers between $500,000 and $750,000 – a reasonable fee for a ready-made team with Major pedigree.

For the players, Complexity was a dream destination. Not only would they be offered bumper pay deals — Copenhagen Flames have said multiple times that they cannot match the salaries available elsewhere —, but they would also represent a storied organization that has guaranteed slots in both ESL Pro League and BLAST Premier.

A deal seemed to be close at hand until Complexity made a last-minute U-turn and signed a North American roster. To this day, Copenhagen Flames co-owner Daniel Vorborg, who doubles as the team’s head coach, still doesn’t know what made Complexity change their minds.

“Complexity was the team that we negotiated with the longest – and also the destination that we thought the players would end up in,” he tells Dexerto. “Only Complexity can say exactly why it didn’t work out in the end. As far as the players and I are concerned, we agreed on everything.

“I’ve read a lot of comments about how the club or the players didn’t accept the offer from Complexity out of greed or because we thought we could get more. That definitely wasn’t the case. When we heard rumors that they were looking into a North American option, we even offered a fairly large discount to make the deal happen.

“In the end, we set a deadline together with the players for Complexity to make a final decision, but they didn’t get back to us on it, so we saw the deal as being dead.”

Vorborg maintains that he doesn’t hold a grudge against Complexity for the way things turned out, but he admits that the protracted saga did contribute to the team’s decline in form after the Major.

By the time they returned home from Stockholm, Copenhagen Flames were ranked ninth in the world, according to HLTV.org. The team have since plummeted to 18th as they have struggled to live up to their new status as a rising power in the cutthroat competitive environment that is Europe’s second tier.

“It has been hard to get the players’ heads in the right space, but my take is that this deal falling through was not the main issue,” he explains. “The issue was that we had such a poor showing throughout the end of the year and confidence was running low.

“There were many different reasons why we did so poorly towards the end of the year, and the negotiations taking a long time was only one of them. Having to deal with motivation issues, playing online again after two big LANs, losing [head coach] pita, me working on getting a new lineup, and having to play as favorites all contributed to this.

“I don’t think we would have made it through this if we didn’t have such a good team atmosphere. It has been a rough couple of months.”

Katowice goals and future offers

Copenhagen Flames showed such class on the first day of IEM Katowice that it was somewhat surprising that Vorborg revealed the players didn’t know what to expect heading into the event.

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According to the coach, a lot was riding on the opening game against Fnatic. “If we lost that game, I would not have been surprised to see us go out of the tournament 0-2, but I also told HooXi before the event: ‘If we beat Fnatic convincingly, we are back, and we will go really far’”.

With a renewed sense of confidence, Copenhagen Flames are marching on to the group stage of IEM Katowice. The tournament is now tightly packed, with all but one of the current top 10 teams in the world in attendance (Entropiq, who are ranked 10th, can still join the lot). Standing in their way first will be No.4-ranked Virtus.pro, who come off an unbeaten run in ESL Challenger February.

Copenhagen Flames know that it will be hard to keep the momentum going, but this ragtag band of misfits — from star player Fredrik ‘roeJ’ Jørgensen, who was in the form of his life last year at 27, to 18-year-old Rasmus ‘Zyphon’ Nordfoss, removed from Astralis’ academy team less than 12 months ago due to attitude issues — just wants to seize the moment. Like in Stockholm, they are taking it one game at a time.

“From now on, it’s the same goals as at the Major,” Vorborg added. “We will be facing some of the best teams in the world, and our goal is just to play our hearts out, and to not be scared.

“We need to make the most out of every game, and then we’ll see how far we can go.”

If Copenhagen Flames continue to impress on LAN, it’s more than likely that interest in the team will be renewed. This would certainly put Vorborg and the players through another rollercoaster of strong emotions.

The Danish organization announced in December, after talks with Complexity had broken down, that they planned to keep the team in their ranks in 2022. But can they resist the temptation to sell if the phone rings again?

Vorborg said: “The plan is not to sell, but we will of course listen to any serious offers if they are in the interest of the team.”