mistou: "Need to play like underdogs"

France, missing key players from G2 and Envy, didn't have an impressive showing in Belgrade so far - picking up only two wins against Singapore and Tunisia.

To find out a bit more about the team's state, preparation and expectations, we talked to the LDLC player Valentin "⁠mistou⁠" Balbastro.

Let’s talk about the tournament in general, what are your impressions so far since it’s your second day here?

Despite some delays it’s been good, nice computers, just the organization of the players on the main stage is a bit weird, because we cannot see each other’s screens.

Talking about Team France, tell me about the process of picking the five players that are here today.

Basically, G2 came back from New York so they were tired and decided to not go to TWC, and EnVy are in Kiev at WESG, so NiaK asked all the players that were interested in going here to contact him so he can put together a team.

Did you have any preparation for the LAN?

No preparation, we are just playing on-the-fly.

You’ve played five matches now, you are 2-0-3, winning against the lower tier teams and losing to Sweden, Denmark and Turkey. How do you feel about the performance so far?

Denmark basically wrecked us on Train, I think the map choice was pretty bad for us. Against Sweden, we lost some stupid CT rounds and it was 16-11. And Turkey… Sweden and Turkey had pretty good preparation for this tournament so it was not that much like a mix vs mix, more like a mix vs team, so it was hard for us to play against them.

You have the first two days to get to know each other and try stuff out because of the format, what do you think you can do in the playoffs that start on Saturday?

I think that we need to play with the right mentality, since we have everything to win and nothing to lose. Despite the fact that the old French lineup won these competitions two times (ESEC and TWC), we are all second tier players here so we need to play like underdogs, without pressure.

The update rolled out today, do you have any thoughts on the addition of graffiti in the game?

(laughs) I don’t know how Valve works on CS:GO, but the game is broke, it needs some changes, everyone is complaining about it and they add skins, graffiti… And you need to pay for graffiti. Like, you have loads of money and you need more?

Your team was involved in the Dosia – zLex incident, could you shine some light on what went down in that match?

It was pretty obvious for us because the two Kazakh players had like 100 ping, and mou and AdreN had 30 ping - the same as zLex. After one map we were like, yeah, he is good. The second map – yeah, crazy headshots and on the third map it was obvious that something was not right, that there were little chances zLex was playing from the Gambit gaming house so we thought it was Dosia. I talked with the admins and then we all know what happened.

Lastly, of the teams present here, who do you think is the strongest, want to avoid in the playoffs?

There is a disagreement in the team about that, I want to avoid Denmark, others want to avoid Turkey. I think we can beat someone like Sweden, but if we play like underdogs, get momentum... who knows what can happen.

Professeur writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter.