MAJ3R: "Mistake to ban Cobble"

In our second talk with Engin "⁠MAJ3R⁠" Küpeli at The World Championships 2016, we focused on the most recent match versus France, while the experienced player also shared his thoughts on the player that has once again impressed at LAN - Ismailcan "⁠XANTARES⁠" Dörtkardeş.

Regarding the veto versus France, you left in two maps that you didn’t play before here that got picked and that is Nuke and Dust2. Nuke was France’s pick and Dust2 was the decider. Can you tell me about the thought process behind the veto?

As we said before in XANTARES’ interview, we are really confident on all maps, we came prepared for all maps. When we make the veto we do it towards the enemy team, so we picked Overpass because we felt like France was not so good on it – and we were able to win it. We left in nuke, they picked nuke, that was not an issue for us to play it, but we didn’t play the CT very well so that is something we need to work on. The last map was Dust2, it was a mistake to ban Cobble actually, I wanted to ban Dust 2 but I banned Cobble and couldn’t go back anymore.

Regarding you being good on all maps, you showed that in the match here, but it was still very close, especially on the first map. What happened in the latter rounds there where you almost let France come back?

I think the score was 15-10 or something like that, we killed two people, got a good situation to finish the match. But we lost this round, they got a lot of confidence there and almost got back. The last round was complicated, I remember I was at B, they were faking everywhere, one time, two times, three times – I said they are going A and rotated - I did a mistake on the rotation. But thanks god I managed to get back to B and we won the round.

MAJ3R and XANTARES waiting for the post-match stage interview

In the interview on stage after the match we saw XANTARES’s reaction and he said that he wasn’t happy with the win because you had a lot of mistakes as a team. How is it to play with a player like him, as he is so talented but I also feel like he is a perfectionist - he wants everything in the team to be perfect? How is it in general and regarding that part of his personality?

In general, it’s awesome to play with him as you have a guy that goes in and opens the map so it’s so easy to play well. In the end, he is a little perfectionist, but I think someone who is a perfectionist will only get better and better, when he makes a mistake he always thinks why he did the mistake and what he can do to improve. It’s very good to have a teammate like this, his character and communications are very good also. He’s a very talented player that could play with a top 3 team easily.

Looking forward to the finals, who would you rather play?

It doesn’t matter, Denmark or Argentina, but I think that Denmark are the favorites here. With Argentina, we don’t know what happened last night, they beat Sweden 2-1 and that is a big thing since Sweden were playing good. When we played Sweden and Denmark (in the group stage), Sweden was playing better then Denmark I think. I congratulate Argentina on this win, the whole team watched the match in the hotel room and it was good. And may the best team win today.

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