YEKINDAR: "A lot of people didn't believe and at some point maybe I even lost belief"

Honestly, it feels amazing. It's a little bit unbelievable, though. After the last year I felt like I was in my lowest point, and if someone told me I would be winning three events with FURIA [laughs] I wouldn't have believed them.
Thank you for my team, because I came to the conclusion that it doesn't matter how hard you work, it's a team game and everything revolves around whether or not you're going to find the right people around you. That's definitely the case here.

Yeah definitely. After the first event at PGL Astana where we made it to the semi-finals with maybe a week of practice, when I saw us playing and how hard working everyone is and how willing they are to be a better version of themselves, I knew that we could go a very long way and reach the top.
After that, it was down to trying stuff, figuring out roles and finding the perfect balance. That was the model for the first season. We played those three events and no one knew if I was going to stay or not, but I already knew after the Major that I would most likely stay.
Then in the second season, it was more about polishing those roles after we figured out the correct positions for everyone. We figured out what we needed to do to improve, and we looked at Vitality as an example. I was watching a lot of them and obviously they're an amazing team, if they're winning every event in a season then they're doing something right, and their system and style was the foundation for ours as well.

It's hard to answer, because I really don't know what our ceiling is yet. After every game, even if we win it, we still have a lot to learn and a lot to improve on. That's the beauty of CS, you can be the best team in the world and you'll still be making mistakes and you'll still be doing things wrong or getting outplayed.
Even after the Vitality final, people can look at the score and see 3-0 and think it was a smash, but no, it was not that. FalleN saved us three maps in a row with 1v2 and 1v1 clutches which completely shifted the games. We came back three maps in a row. That's not something we can rely on, so there's definitely room for improvement.

For me it's definitely a new feeling. I feel like in every lineup I've played in, there was always something that came up and you understand it's something you try to fix, but it's unfixable in some way. You understand then that you need to adapt other players, but I haven't met that in this team yet.
I don't know if it's going to happen, maybe in the future FalleN goes crazy or something, many things could happen, but the best part about this team is that we're ready to communicate with each other and fix any problems that come up. That's something that has worked a lot more than anything else.

We prepared Ancient at the start of the season, and we played it against SAW at FISSURE, because we understood that we don't want to give a free ban away against a team that doesn't play Ancient.
We have players that play Ancient. Me and molodoy like it a lot, KSCERATO and yuurih have also played it before, so we prepared it and were ready to pick it but we didn't have enough courage to do so at certain points. We could've picked it against Aurora, because they were perma-banning it, but to the better of this result, we didn't pick it back then and now picked it in the final when Vitality banned Train.
I read somewhere that apEX said that our Train and Overpass are very strong, and probably stronger than theirs, and we felt that too. We knew that if it went to those maps we had a very good chance of winning, so when they're taking one of those out and doing something ballsy, we have to go for one as well.
We didn't think about it much, we just preemptively decided that if it was going to be the case, we were going to play Ancient. It was down to understanding of where to put it in the veto, and the decision was to put it as the first map. We could get it out of the way that way.
I'm glad it worked out, but honestly? Even though we prepared it, it was still 13-11. If Vitality won that map, the final goes a completely different direction.

I've heard only good things about FalleN. I played in Liquid and he was there before me and everyone was positive about him. I heard about his leadership qualities, about his IGL qualities, everything.
Coming into the team, I knew that the player is not going to go missing. He has so many talents in all the right places, and even if he can underperform individually, it just wouldn't matter.
The good part that I didn't expect is that the stars have aligned everywhere else, which is something I didn't expect. molodoy has been great, I've come back, and FalleN has been a great rifle IGL. I've seen so many insane moments from FalleN, we call him the Messi of scrims, but it's great to see how it also translates to officials.
He's super talented, doing donk slides and everything. He doesn't think about micro too much, but it helps that he has KSCERATO and me who are very forward players who think about micro a lot, and he's very open for us giving him advice on certain situations.
He asks us what he can do in certain scenarios and he knows he can always come to us for an opinion. That's his best quality, he just learns things. Right now he's studying piano, drums, musical instruments and going to the gym and everything. He wants to improve every aspect of his life and that's an insane quality that makes him a great leader and a great person.

After we won, after all the celebrations, I caught myself in a moment where I was about to cry. To some degree, it was like a weight off my shoulders. I started just remembering the feelings I had last year, and it definitely wasn't easy.
A lot of people didn't believe and at some point maybe I even lost belief. But I'm thankful for my girlfriend, my family, for FURIA and the teammates I have now that they gave me another opportunity and I'm happy that I didn't give up.
I don't know how motivational it is for other players, but when you think it's over or other people say it is, it doesn't mean it actually is. Everyone can have a bad period in their life, so it's a little bit unbelievable still honestly.

Me personally? No. But I do have a little bit of a rivalry with them because they bombed us out of the Copenhagen RMR when I was on Liquid if I remember right, and we lost many qualifiers and Showdowns and whatever else to them whilst I was in the slump, so I definitely want to win against them.
I also feel the Brazilians have the same thing. It would be strange if they didn't, if I was playing against a Latvian team I would want to destroy them, not in a bad way, but in a competitive way.
There's definitely some emotions around it, but we'll see how it goes. Last time we won an event we went to the next one and instantly lost the next game against HOTU at EPL, so the main thing for us is to not get too cocky and not start to make mistakes. We have to believe in what we're doing and our identity and not lose it, if we lose it before the Major then it's going to be a rough one.

Honestly, I haven't thought about this until now. Before Austin I knew that we had a good chance. We had a great bootcamp, but it was more about the fact that I know how hard it is for a new team to play these long events and go deeper, which is normally why underdog teams that go on Cinderella runs go far but don't win because their playbook just isn't deep enough. That's something that wins you the tournament.
Now we've won three BO5s in the last month and a half. Our map pool is ready. We know our playbook very well and we're adapting it to every opponent. We're very comfortable playing these long games deep into runs.
The hardest part for us is to just get to that point. That's when we're going to meet all these young and hungry teams in Group Stage matches, games where people don't have as much pressure. I feel like we are a team that strives after pressure, and we did the right adapting after Austin because we choked that one, so now we're improving our arena games a lot. Coming into the Major I think we have all the tools to win it.