Degster Speaks Highly of Niko: “It Feels Good To Play With This Guy”

The OG star shares his experiences of playing alongside Nikolaj “⁠niko⁠” Kristensen

OG kicked off their IEM Rio journey with an exciting overtime win against Vitality on Overpass, overturning a 6-11 deficit to clinch a hard-fought victory. Abdul “degster” Gasanov and his teammates will now face Cloud9 in the next round, with a playoff spot up for grabs.

Following his team's win, degster sat down with HLTV to discuss how is it like to play beside niko. 

“This guy is crazy to be honest [laughs]. But yeah I like him, it feels good to play with this guy. For me, I still feel I lost some things when I played in CIS region, it's small details but these small details are improving you to be a top player from a mediocre player.”

degster also explained how much impact the Danish rifler has had on the team’s playing style since taking over as the in-game leader two months ago. 

“Like for example today there was a situation, 2vs1, where player like niko who has been playing in Heroic and has experience, he helps me to control the situation with my teammate because my teammate was not giving any information to me. So he helps me because I did my best, he helped me, and because of it I killed ZywOo. And I told to niko in live, thank you niko, because if it's going to be my native language I will speak super fast, super loud, I know what to say and I know that my teammates will always understand me, but when it's an international team and it's not everyone's native language, it getting much harder to explain. Even in the last round there was a lot of things that I know, after the year together, I know which things can work ten times better by just using the native language, and it's sometimes affecting your emotions, you feel sad that it's not working.”

“A player like niko is helping not only as an IGL, but also as a player, a teammate, to do certain things and win more rounds, and I respect it.” 

OG are now set to take on Cloud9 in the next stage of the competition. What do he and his teammates think about the upcoming battle against the Russian giants? 

“I'm feeling okay. We played against them online, but to be honest I don't remember when the last time I played against C9 offline. I'm very excited to play this game, and I really want to play the best CS that we have in Rio before a Major to have more chances to improve and be the best versions of ourselves in Paris.”