cadiaN: "We have an easier time against top ten teams than lesser teams"

We're feeling pretty good. Our upwards trajectory at PGL Cluj-Napoca was especially good to see.
We had a lot of eventful games, and we were able to constantly develop despite the tight schedule and the amount of matches we played. We still go to talk through all the details and it was very important for our ranking to finish third.

I'm having some moments where I'm still having a lot of impact through my individual skill, but there's still some games where I'm not as comfortable as I want to be. There's a lot of studying to be done in terms of how to approach certain positions, whether that's CT or T.
I'm still improving on some of the micro details, how to peek different things, the timings of some of my roles in certain situations, so I'm just looking out for how to become better.

It means a lot, now we are very close to securing a direct spot at the Major, being top ten in EU. Also, ending as very long stint of non-stop officials with a win was important.
The atmosphere in the arena was incredible. The Romanian fans maybe didn't support us in the beginning, but as the tournament progressed, you could feel that the entertainment we had provided through our CS and passion had caused us to grow on them. It created a very nice experience for us to play there.
I think that's part of the reason why it was so fun and so important for us to win that match, to make sure that we could also handle the pressure of the crowd.

I think that currently the ranking is very sensitive to wins and losses, so a game like that can be very important to a lot of teams in most scenarios. Also, when there's such a big gap in terms of prize distribution between third and fourth, that's another incentive to play.
Personally, I'm not too big of a fan of showmatches, anyway. It's not something I want to watch, and when I've been waiting to play the final, it's meh to sit and wait to go and set up because people are jumping around with a Scout and low gravity. I'd rather watch good CS.
For us, at least, the intensity was good. It might depend on whatever team is playing and what their approach is, but we had no issues to prepare ourselves mentally for it.

We're fairly happy with the progress. Of course, sometimes you want things to move quicker, but as long as we're taking small steps, we're always in the right direction.
I don't think we've hit our ceiling yet, but we've shown great promise. I also think our floor has been raised quite a lot throughout the last couple of games, but we still need to keep our eyes on the prize and keep delivering both in practice and in officials against lesser teams.
I think we've shown that we've had an easier time against top ten teams and leaning into that way of thinking and playing than we have against lesser teams. But that can't be an excuse, we need to punish any kind of playstyle and that's something we're focusing on.

I'm doing what I can, not just to facilitate stavn but also the three other players to make sure they feel as comfortable as possible in game.
We're trying to create the best environment for everyone to perform, and some players will have one bad tournament and another good one down the line, I trust all the individuals on the team and we're trying to create the best environment for us to reach our potential.
I'm not worried about anyone.

jabbi brings a lot of great initiative, especially on the communication side of the game. When he's feeling it, he communicates really well and creates a lot of good opportunities for himself and his teammates.
You know him as a reliable lurker across the map, punishing aggression, but he's also capable of communicating weaknesses when people are playing too passive.
He's a very integral piece to the puzzle of how we want to play and my philosophy of play. He understands it very well, and we're hoping to see even more from him.

I have mixed feelings. I think that most of the games will be played in the studio, and we're in a very tough group. I'm not a fan of groups being decided based upon the seeding of when you invited the teams, which is like three months ago. We should start using seeding to rank the teams closer to the actual match days.
But then again, it's also an opportunity to beat some of the best teams in the world, and that's an opportunity we are looking to seize.
We'll take it one game at a time. We have Vitality first, it didn't go too well in our last game against them, but that was also me playing for just five days with the team, so by now we should have more structure and more ability to show what we're capable of.