364 days ago, Forze played Imperial in a 2-2 game at the PGL Antwerp Challengers stage for the chance to progress to the Legends stage. One day shy of the first anniversary of that loss, Zorte and Forze missed out on another chance to make the Legends stage of a Major here at the BLAST.tv Paris Major, losing out 2-0 to GamerLegion.
Close but no cigar
Frustration is to be expected when it comes to Forze's run here in Paris. Opening up against GamerLegion, it appeared that the Andrey "Jerry" Mekhryakov-led lineup was cruising to a straightforward win over the Australian squad Grayhound, up 12-3 at halftime on Mirage. Unfortunately for Forze, it turned out to be a choke of epic proportion for them as Grayhound clawed it back and won the map 16-14.
The mental resilience from Forze to bounce back after the choke against Grayhound was admirable, going back to back in their following BO1s against Liquid and Monte to move back into progression games. That is where Forze was given the daunting task of facing the former Major Champions FaZe.
Losing 2-0 to the European juggernaut FaZe, Aleksandr "zorte" Zagodyrenko and co. squared up against GamerLegion in the do-or-die 2-2 clash. The CIS team ran out of steam on the final day, being knocked out after 16-12 and 16-13 losses on Overpass and Inferno respectively.
For the 24-year-old, the heartbreak was clear after the loss when BLAST.tv got a chance to catch up with the AWPer. The third highest-rated player at this stage only behind Ilya "m0NESY" Osipov and Justin "jks" Savage, his performance was not enough to pull the team through.
I don't know, I'm happy that I could show a good performance here, but it's not enough, it's not enough. It's just bad, everything inside the team right now, it feels like everybody is nervous, and I am too. It's just not enough, we just lost as a team.
With their run at an end, it also begs the question of what's next for zorte and his team. Forze have played a whopping 96 maps in the last 3 months, so it appears that the squad have earned a bit of a break
Hard to say. We'll just chill out a bit. We've got two big tournaments coming up in Katowice and another one. After this tournament we don't know what's happening with CS:GO, maybe CS2 will come out.
Stephanie Lindgren