mou: "I'm not sure if I'll be able to sleep tonight"

Gambit started off the Astralis semi-final with a 16-10 win on Overpass, where Rustem "⁠mou⁠" Telepov put up 33 kills (1.86 rating), before dropping their pick, Inferno, 8-16.

The decider saw Gambit go up 12-6 before the Danes began mounting a comeback, reaching 13-12, when Danylo "⁠Zeus⁠" Teslenko took a timeout and switched up the pace to finish off the series at 16-12, advancing to the grand final.

mou highlighted Zeus' leadership as one of the reasons for Gambit's triumph over Astralis

After the first semi-final, mou gave us an interview about the nail-biting semi and the upcoming grand final:

First of all, what did you expect from the match-up against Astralis, can you talk me through the veto?

We knew which maps we'd play, we were ready for Overpass and Inferno. We were pretty confident on Inferno, but we couldn't play our game. Regarding the third map, we just banned Nuke so they had a choice between Cache and Train. We were ready for both of them, and when they picked Train, we were confident.

How confident did you feel on Overpass, where you personally ended up having a massive performance? Historically, it's been a good map for you, but recently you stopped playing it, how so?

We were confident about Overpass all the time, we didn't practice it because we wanted to give more time to other maps, make them stronger. Regarding my game, that's because the captain [Zeus] let me play my game, what I wanted. When I wanted to push, I pushed, when I wanted to hold, I held, so that's why.

You touched on the issues that you had on Inferno, can you elaborate on that, why it ended up being quite a one-sided map in Astralis' favor?

We were ready on Inferno, we watched two of their matches, and we just made wrong decisions. We thought they would play a bit differently. They broke our economy and that's why I couldn't buy an AWP all the time, and that's why we lost it.

Going over to Train, you had a great start and in the end a good half, then won the pistol, but you had issues closing out the match. Can you explain what happened past that 12-6 point and what Zeus talked about in that eco round where he stood in spawn?

When we were on the T side, we started by winning a couple of rounds and we started feeling that we could win and we just started to be nervous, that's why we decided to hold ivy and middle. But everything went wrong, we were really nervous and everybody was trying to give their ideas.

Zeus was then just standing on the spawn and calmed everyone down, like 'guys, we have two or three tactical rounds, let's make them, we have nothing to lose', and that's pure leadership, when Zeus can calm everyone down like that so we can win the game.

What does reaching the grand final at a Major mean to you, what was the atmosphere like when you won the match?

We still can't believe that we're in the grand final. We're all speechless, after the match I wrote 'wake me up' on Twitter, because I still didn't believe it was real.

After the previous Major when we failed against fnatic in the quarter-final, we just decided that this is our biggest dream, we have to work so hard. In the last six months, we weren't at home, we live in Ukraine because of the internet, and we were working really hard. This was our main goal and we reached it, and Zeus is always saying that his biggest dream is to win the Major, and that's kind of viral. We want it as well.

For you to do that, you'll face Immortals or Virtus.pro in the grand final, what is it going to take for you to win?

Immortals is a good team, they're doing really well, but in Poland against Virtus.pro in their home arena, they can't make it, VP is going to be in the final. I'm not sure if I'll be able to sleep tonight because of the nerves, tomorrow we expect a really good game against Virtus.pro and we want to win it.