kuben on snatchie, ZOTAC Cup Masters 2018 and team future

Big interview of our coach.

– Unfortunately, our today's debut with snatchie did not go the way we wanted it to. We've lost the match against the Korean team MVP. Allow me to start my speech a bit differently than usual. Please, don't take it as If I'm looking for excuses. However, I will introduce you to a few reasons for our current weakness. For two months already, we've been struggling with our line-up. In a difficult moment for us, Snax has left the team. At that moment, we had a really limited choice of a fifth player for a stand-in. However, we've managed to find a really good player – morelz. He's an extremely skillful and smart player, but we knew from the very beginning that it was just a temporary change, while our main goal was to get snatchie into the team.

Valencia Spain was our first series together with morelz. We've failed to present ourselves too well over there. There's no need to hide that the level difference was almost a shock for him, and he kind of felt lost. However, that trip certainly helped him to settle with the team and take a look at everything from a different perspective. The next two weeks of solid practice have brought us about really good results, which everyone could see from our Shanghai performance. It's true that we were extremely close to making it to the finals, and we actually had a shot to win the entire series.

The Shanghai tournament was sort of like a rescue ring for us. With it, we could get points for HLTV ranking, the points we're currently missing to make it to the top-15 (or even higher), which is required to get direct tournament invitations. Even though it took place during the holiday season, we decided to take part in it. So, we went to this tournament after cutting our vacation days to just nine. Similarly to the situation with the Hong Kong tournament, we already knew that we won't be going to Stockholm's DreamHack Masters after that defeat in the qualifiers. Plus, we wanted snatchie to feel as a part of the team before going to the most important tier of tournaments such as Majors, so we were certain that participating in this tournament would be a great way to break the ice.

Since we went to Shanghai, the other teams during that time day they already had vacations so they could start practicing as the teams earlier. As far as I know, such teams like MIBR and Kinguin already were on one-week bootcamps around that time. Team MVP, our today's opponent, as well have been training for about two or three months with this line-up – it was their first LAN together. So, obviously, they were also really hungry for success. Again, I'm not looking for an excuse, as I said, I'm merely explaining why two days of practice after a ten-day break and a total unavailability of PCs were not enough to get into the zone.

And there is one more problem in our minds that you will probably hear about soon. Despite the fact that we are trying our best, it's not easy to play when we know that we are going to change our line-up again after the next tournament. Our team can be called a family not necessarily because of the relationship inside, but for understanding each other as teammates as outside of the game, as also in-game. The funny comparison can be an example – let's just assume that we are a ballet team and we have our own enrichment in snatchie as a great player, and like after two days of training there is no harmonization will continue to fail. It's like more time to fine tune the system. So yeah...

Overall, I think we actually played a really good match today. Maybe we did not show up on Mirage that match. But, I think, we could close the game in just two maps had we not lost Inferno after leading 10:5 on T, which is our war site on the map. After returning to Poland, we will have five more days of practice and we'll try to play as much as possible to guarantee ourselves an ability to participate in the next major in Katowice.

You can also the fact that you're not jumping on our chairs after winning a round in game doesn't mean we don't give our heart into the game because we have still have passion for the game and still have anger to win. But the results which are not satisfying for both you and us are not the reason. But maybe, we're not showing it in that way, that's all.

I mean, we still want to win just as much as you want us to win. The fact that we were the very top team in the past years doesn't mean that we are not fighting to become a top team again, because we really are fighting and we really do want it. But we are just struggling for some time and we're just not losing the faith. We're optimistic, and we believe that one day, we'll at least return to the top-10 in the future.