kzy: "Need to get our heads clear"

After a close game against Space Soldiers, the German team was eliminated by GODSENT with a 2-0 on Cobblestone and Train.

To find out how the ESWC 2016 champions feel after their early exit, we talked to ALTERNATE aTTaX's Oliver "⁠kzy⁠" Heck.

You won ESWC 2016 just last weekend and you were looking pretty good coming here, what was your preparation and what were your expectations coming into the event?

We didn’t have much time to prepare, but we prepared our group at least. Our knowledge wasn’t our problem but our performance individually was really bad today.

So, you played your first match against Space Soldiers, you had the lead but in the end they managed to come back on cobblestone and close it 16-14. Did you have any regrets, some people were talking about maybe not playing Cobblestone against Space Soldiers would be a good idea?

We were in the lead like 10-3 or something and we just couldn’t close out the important rounds in the end. We won one eco and lost two or three on our T side and that was the main problem. We were always in a bad economic situation and when we outplayed them tactic wise they always had good individual performances like paz with his spraydown in the sideway.

After that you waited for your next match and it ended up being GODSENT as they were upset by LDLC. Were you surprised that you had to play them as the elimination match and were you confident going into it?

We were hoping we would meet GODSENT in the upper-bracket match, not the lower so it was a bit surprising. However, LDLC played good in their match and GODSENT failed to come back after their bad start. So we were a little surprised, but not really much.

Can you talk to me a bit about what happened on the first map against GODSENT?

The map started kinda good, we knew everything they play, we had so many man advantage situations but I think flusha clutched two or three times so it was 8-7 only. We should’ve won more rounds as Terrorists, and we should've won the match versus Space Soldiers as well. We didn’t hit our shots in the important rounds, we lost five-on-three ones, and individual performances from JW and flusha made the difference.

Talking about the second map, Train, GODSENT had a good first half. Moving into the second one, we saw three or four eco rounds won by opposite sides, some of them pretty crazy. What was happening in those rounds, was the composure so bad or was it just the other team playing good with the pistols?

The sound is not as good as online, so every team is kinda surprised by some pushes. In the end, we lost one anti-eco because Lekr0 got like three one-deags - that was a round that really broke us, economically and mentally. After that it was hard to come back. On the CT side we had a good start, but the communication wasn’t on point and they were very good using free space.

So that’s it for you here at the Minor, what are your plans, are you going to prepare for ELEAGUE that you have coming up?

We will bootcamp until ELEAGUE, we just need to get our heads clear, prepare, and maybe surprise someone there.

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