HooXi on Astralis at the 2026 Esports World Cup: “Top 16 isn’t the limit for us. We can go much further.”
Astralis captain Rasmus “HooXi” Nielsen, in an interview at the 2026 Esports World Cup, analyzed his team’s performance in the match against Ninjas in Pyjamas and shared his thoughts on the team’s advancement to the tournament’s playoffs.
On the victory over Ninjas in Pyjamas on Nuke
I think everything just clicked for us on Nuke. It feels like even if we’d lost the attack side 0-0, we would’ve pulled off an insane comeback on the defense side. It’s great that we were able to close out the map quickly.
On the loss on Inferno
On Inferno, we lost two crucial force buys that we should have secured—our shots just weren’t hitting their targets. After that, I made a few bad calls, but then redeemed myself with some good kills at the end of the half. On defense, our team tried to outsmart our opponents, and we paid dearly for it. I think if we’d played our usual style, we would’ve won easily. <...> I’m glad we managed to take the decisive Cache map.
On advancing to the Esports World Cup 2026 playoffs
The Top 16 isn’t the limit for us. We can go much further. That said, our performance depends heavily on how we’re playing on any given day. We played well today—we need to keep it up.
Astralis defeated Ninjas in Pyjamas 2-1 in maps during the group stage of the 2026 Esports World Cup. HooXi’s team has advanced to the tournament’s playoffs, where they will face G2 Esports on August 19—the match will take place at 5:00 p.m. Moscow time.
