Vitality were by far the best team in 2023 but have faced a slow start to 2024.
However, the international team is now heating up and their last three events have seen them reach a semi-final and two grand-finals consecutively.
Ahead of BLAST Premier Spring Final presented by Revolut, we spoke to Vitality captain apEX about their form and what it means for mezii to play an event on home soil.
It's the final event of the season, how are you looking back at it?
The season started pretty badly for us, going out in last place at Katowice. But since then, we've had good results even if we haven't won any trophies. A semi-final and two grand finals in a row are good results for us.
For us, the season really depends on a good result here. A trophy would be awesome because it would reward our season and our form.
To sum it up I would say that the season has been good without being fantastic.
Do you think the Katowice result was an anomaly or was it a slow start to a year you've had to warm up into?
I think there are a few reasons for that result. The first one is that I've always struggled in Katowice, I just don't know what happens to me there. It extends to the rest of the team as well, we never get good results there and a quarter-final is as far as we've ever gone.
The second thing is that we came back from a really strong 2023 and I don't think we realised how much work we would need to put in to get back to that level. The end of 2023 was easy winning two tournaments even with a roster change and only losing a map in that time, so obviously you just can't expect it to be that easy all the time.
When we came to realise that it was a bit too late, and I think I didn't prepare correctly as a result at the beginning of the season.
What do you think went wrong in those two finals now that you've had some time to reflect on them?
At Pro League we just didn't show up, there was only one team in the final. We played a really good quarter-final against FaZe and a good semi-final against Astralis, but we just disappeared in the final. MOUZ deserved the win, but I'm sad for them that they didn't have a team to face against. Losing a final in such an easy way isn't the best, I won so many finals like that and the feeling of it isn't the same.
In Dallas we threw it away, we had four map points on Inferno and we almost threw Anubis away as well by losing all the clutches. Our players just didn't play as well as they can as well.
In the end, we lost those two finals, but when we look at the playoff games we have played we can be proud of some of those games as well.
You said you didn't prepare correctly, but when you go from 2023 to 2024 and the form across the two years is it hard to always immediately see what you're doing wrong?
No, not really. It's always the same, there is only one winner and in tournaments most of the time there are 15 losers. We were really happy to have the 2023 we had and I'll give everything I have in order to get to the same level in 2024.
When I say I didn't prepare correctly I mean only Katowice, in other results we just didn't play well or lost due to little individual things. I just think that it's just CS and it's really tough to go from a really strong year to the next, we saw that with FaZe and NAVI and a lot of other teams, it's just rough to win again.
We're working hard to get there and unfortunately, we haven't won a trophy yet, but hopefully, we'll lift one or a few more in 2024.
Do you think that there's the potential of there being a firepower issue? mezii was never intended to be a 1:1 swap but if you look at the metric of ratings he is lower than Magisk was.
Yes, that is true, but flameZ has been stepping up more than he was when Magisk was here. It's not about the ratings, mezii might have a worse rating but he has shown what he is capable of, especially in Dallas.
It took Magisk some time to become the best version of himself in Vitality and it will take time for mezii to do it too. In general, he might have worse stats still, but the step up of flameZ compared to back then offsets it. I also have better stats too, so it's a mixture of things, you can't compare 1:1 because Magisk asked for far more space than mezii does.
I don't think we lack firepower, you can see that in games against Spirit or FaZe, but maybe in some moments we lack our peak levels.
You played Spirit for the first time in Dallas and it seemed like you might have a good match-up against them prior to the game, did you guys feel the same way?
We played them a lot in practice against each other and I think we have a good way of thinking about the game versus them. But I do think it could have gone either way on Mirage even if we dominated in the whole game.
It would be amiss of us to not talk about mezii as the hometown favourite; we've seen what having the home crowd behind you can do for the team in Paris, do you think you'll get the same buff here?
I don't think it will be as big as in Paris because that was also about Vitality being a French organisation.
Obviously, we will have the crowd with us here or we better or we will be mad at the UK people [laughs] but I think it can be so helpful. As we say in football, the crowd is the twelfth man and in CS it's the sixth man.
I really hope we reach the playoffs because it will also be the first time mezii gets to play in his home country.
Has he said anything about this event meaning more to him?
Of course, it will be one of the first times that his family has been able to watch the tournament so when you have people you love watching you it can cause fireworks. I hope he gets to enjoy it and I know we'll all do our best for him to get to enjoy that moment. Me and ZywOo know how much joy it can bring in those situations.
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