When you started at the highest level on Source, you were under AsP's lead. Compared to other Source alumni, he's a leader that is unknown to people who have only been following CS since Global Offensive. How would you describe him, what kind of leader was he, what kind of game style was he trying to establish?

At first glance, Laurent (AsP) was a very dry, very withdrawn person, not really a funny guy. There were a lot of people who didn't like him for that. But when I got to know him, he was the opposite of that. He's a jovial person, very funny, who joked all the time. On CS, he wanted a very structured game, based on control-maps with prepared executions and lots of mid-game calls. That was the best way to go at the time, and it's how CS is still played today at the highest level.

He taught us how to get by on the map, with important individual roles. He gave players an orientation at the beginning of the round and made redirections according to the progress of the round, with our help. So there was a compromise between a structured lead and quite a lot of freedom left to the players all over the map, especially for me, who was a bit of a crazy sniper.

He was one of the precursors of how the real, good CS is played: control-maps, classics setups, information gathering. It was at a rudimentary level at the time, but just having those ideas was enough to make the difference.

In your recent projects, where you led and coached, have you kept a lot of things from that time and from the example of AsP?

Of course I have. But not only me, he was an example for the whole French scene, whether it was me, Ex6TenZ, krL. For example, krL played 6 months under the lead of AsP, and he obviously used that. The real grandfathers of the lead in France were AsP and maLeK.

Looking back at the teams you both played in between 2008 and 2011, one can see a young shox, a young apEX, a young ScreaM. Was it a conscious choice on his part to play with young people to get them out, with a position as an educator of the new generation?

At the time, there weren't really long-term training ideas in the scene. We had nothing, we were just playing to show that we were the best, there was no money anyway. They were young players, we were in a team with visibility, so AsP made the bet to take them and integrate them, more or less by training them. Just by working, we knew that it would work.

When we took Richard (shox) at the very beginning with Creativ', he made his LAN debuts with us, at the Re-SO. Later, we took Adil (ScreaM) and Dan (apEX), it was a bet on youth, but it was mostly because they were very strong. And they knew that AsP and I, with our experience, were going to help them in all this. By the way, all three of them won their first big LAN with AsP and me.

Did you play with other leaders in your career?

At the very beginning, when I first broke into CS:S, I was in HF.Mother. We were a team of young nonames, without experience, and at our first LAN, a PxL, we beat some good teams, like Bz. Two months later, we had the Gamers Assembly 2006, the first on Source, it was the event of the year. We wnet there as a mix between friends and we made top 3, we beat everyone who was calling us cheaters online.

After this LAN, I received a message on IRC from Lordzz, who was the most reknown player of CS:S, and who gave me access to a channel where the best players were meeting. From that day on, I never left the top. After the LAN, the big teams tried to recruit me with one of my teammates, crZ. I had the choice between H2k, led by maLek, and what would later become D4, with AsP. My first choice was to play with maLek, so I snubbed AsP.

Two months later, we made our first lan and made top 2, which was a failure since we had all the best players on the scene. After the competition, AsP came to see me and talked to me again about his new project. That's when I joined him, and I never left him, for 3 years. I had no other leaders than Damien (maLeK), for 4 or 5 months, and Laurent.

Why didn't you make the transition to CS:GO?

My career peak was in 2011 at 3DMAX, when we beat VeryGames at the MaxLan 2011. I was already 21 years old at that time. In those days, I was a student, going from junior year to junior year, but I wasn't really working. Except that at 21, my parents pressured me to get my life started.

In early 2011, we created 3DMAX with AsP, shox, apEX, ScreaM and me. We did the Epsilan as a mix because ScreaM couldn't come, and the next month we played the MaxLan. I had warned AsP before the LAN that, whatever the result, I would probably stop and go back to work. I didn't want to tell the others so as not to ruin the atmosphere.

In the end, with only 3 months of practice, we beat VG, who had been undefeated for a year and a half. I was very strong, Richard was very very strong. Adil and Dan, for what was their first big LAN, were very good too. And right after that, I told them, "Here we go, it's brutal but I have to stop, I have no choice" and they took it very badly.

In the following month, I successfully took the gendarmerie exam, which is quite easy. Normally, there is a delay of 6 to 9 months before going to that school. But as my father knew someone, I was able to enter earlier and a month later I was sent to Tulle, in Corrèze. I went from being a CS player living at his parents' house in Marseille to going to a gendarmerie school in the far reaches of France.

So in June 2011, I dropped everything and went to school. I had no choice, I had to do something with my life because at the time, we didn't make any money. We just played out of pride, to be the best, not for money, because there was no money. Take the MaxLan that we win in 2011: we shared 1500 € between the five of us.

When did you start to reconnect with CS?

After the gendarmerie school, I was transferred near Agen. In my unit, we had two apartments that we shared with six young recruts, we were basically roommates. But the Interet connection sucked and I didn't have my PC, so I hung up the mouse. In addition, we worked a lot, like very long hours. I kept following the scene and going to VaKarM, but I wasn't playing anymore. I finally got a PC back at the beginning of 2012, and I was offered to play a PxL for fun. It just so happened that the LAN took place right during one of my permissions while I was going back to Marseille, so I accepted.

It was GMX who had contacted me, and he told me he was with a young guy who looked a lot like me, who was even stronger and all that. His name was kennyS. I didn't know him, but apparently he'd been playing with them as a pickup for 2-3 months, they weren't even sure he wasn't cheating. He explained to me that he was stronger than me at the sniper, and that he was the next generation.

We played together for a week before the LAN, and there we lost in the final against VG. And indeed, kennyS was really good. Afterwards, I took him back to the Marseille train station, we talked for a long time and he explained to me, as the 15 y/o kid he was, that he was taking me as an example. So I gave him some advice and I felt that he was the future.

After that, I played for fun, a pickup game from time to time with my buddies, but I couldn't do any more than that because of my schedule. I played with Richard, Dan and the other guys. I did a year like that and the following year CS:GO started to take off. I was following all that develop and Uzzziii contacted me to get back in the game and do the first EMS on CS:GO.

I warned them that I was pretty bad, I must have had 50-100 hours on CS:GO, but they told me that we were going to practice and that it would come back quickly. At that point, I'm still in the gendarmerie, with an awful wi-fi connection, a lousy desk, a wooden chair, it was terrible. It was really the first time I was back in the game competitively. On May 1, 2013, I played my first official games on CS:GO, and as expected, I sucked. But with my 70h/week schedule in the gendarmerie, I didn't plan to take it up seriously anyway, even if the idea was in my head a bit.

So what did bring you back to the game?

In 2014, I left the gendarmerie, my contract ended in July and I didn't want to continue. I went back to Marseille with my wife, whom I had met there. I resumed my studies with a Bachelor in environmental services. I went on a part-time training, working every other week as an area manager in a cleaning company.

I was the general manager of the cleaning employees. It wasn't very exciting, but you learn a lot about life. You manage people who do a difficult job, who are older than you are, and you're the one who has to do their planning, check their work. It made me progress a lot in my management qualities, human contact and communication in general. It was during this period that I started to get back into the game.

But, already, the gendarmerie made me mature at an incredible speed, I aged 20 years in my head, in only 4 years. You live incredible things, you see dead people, you make arrests. You see the dark side of society, all the distress of those with whom you have to talk, know how to approach people. If you don't have this kind of experience, you can spend a whole life without understanding what the gendarmes go through on a daily basis. That's the only thing that made me a man, and it gave me an insight that not many people can have, on how to approach life, how to approach problems, especially on CS:GO.

You met misutaaa more than 3 years ago. How did it go? Did you immediately realize that he had a special talent, that he was not a player like the others?

So 2014 is the year when I started to play again, to come back a little bit in the pickup circuit, on FACEIT, for 2 years. I couldn't tryhard too much because I had school, work and my girlfriend. In 2016, I finished my studies and my working hours were quite flexible, I could manage my schedule to free up my afternoons, so I had more time to play.

In the second part of the year, I really wanted to play again at a good level, so I asked to the old guys to put together a team that was a bit serious. At that time, it was krL, HysokA, janssen and Bistoufly. I wanted to see what we were worth, and in January 2017 we launched the team with the goal of performing at the Gamers Assembly 2017.

Just before the start of the LAN, we kicked HysokA and Bistoufly and recruited Jas_x and Uzzziii, who was available for the GA. The LAN went well, we were not ridiculous, we finished top 8 and beat known teams, we made decent scorelines and lost against Epsilon (maleK, VKLL, JaCKz, LoWkii, Kan4) in the lower bracket. Individually, I was not bad, krL was good and the others were holding their own.

And at this LAN, there was a little kid that I was told about, someone recommended him to me if I was ever looking for a player. I asked who he was and iDex pointed him out to me: he was 1m40, 20kg, he was 14 years old, while I was 28-29! So I went to talk to him for 5 minutes, to introduce myself, to talk about the LAN, how he got out of quickly with a team of buddies of his (misutaaa, LoRd, iDex, Kronic, AlexTopGoal).

There I told him that if he was interested, we had a community where we all played together, we did a lot of pickups, and if he wanted to come with us, use our experience, he was welcome. He thanked me, and shyly promised to add me on Steam. And indeed, when I got back home, he'd added me. We started to discuss and I brought him back on the Mumble. At the beginning, everyone found him quite average, he was skilled but nothing more. But I was defending him, he was 14 years old, he had never played competitively, at his age I hadn't even installed CS:S. He had to be taught the basics.

We did 6 months where he played with us in mixes and pickups, and during this time we had stopped the team with krL. So at the beginning of 2017, I told myself that it was useless to try to restart projects with old people, I felt capable of playing at a good level and I wanted to set up a project with young players. I already had misutaaa who trusted me, it was up to me to find 2-3 young people to complete the composition. He was motivated, he wanted to succeed and break through. It took me 3 months to find the players and we launched it in January 2018.

The first five players were me, misutaaa, Luigi, Slazy and Sirza. We started from the ESEA Open, I crafted a training program on the basics, how to react in the game, how to react outside the game, how to work. From that moment on, I always stayed with misutaaa, even if the others got shuffled around to find the proper mix of players, able to perform.