coldzera: "VP impressed me a lot, playing against them was amazing"

SK started off the best-of-five grand final with a 10-16 loss on Mirage but quickly equalized the score, sweeping Virtus.pro 16-6 on Inferno with a flawless Terrorist side.

The Brazilians then came back from a 3-12 deficit on the CT side of Train, pushing the third map to overtime to grab their second win with a 4-1 scoreline after regulation. Unable to close the series on Cache, the match went to map five, Cobblestone.

coldzera shares his views on the amazing best-of-five affair

There, Virtus.pro got up 14-9 before SK came back to secure an overtime once more. Just one set wasn't enough, as the Brazilians turned a 2v4 situation around up against match point and went on to lock down the second overtime, clinching the EPICENTER trophy after a fantastic best-of-five.

After the match, we once again got a hold of Marcelo "⁠coldzera⁠" David, who became the tournament's MVP following a strong performance throughout:

The first map I'd like to touch on is Inferno, where Virtus.pro had been successful this entire tournament. It ended up being quite a one-sided win for you, was there something you found out about them, something that would work against them?

I was watching VP's games against FaZe and G2 and they didn't look special in anything. I told my teammates in the break before the game "Guys, if we win the pistol on the T side and just play default every time, we're gonna win." And we started on CT and we had a good half, we countered them a lot of times, we had aggressive arch side setups, aggressive short. We had good aggressive setups.

When we went to the T side, we won the pistol. When VP played against G2, I saw that pasha rotated too much to the site, so they were strong on the site and they put byali in CT to watch arch for them. So I said that the first strat we needed to do was to go arch to B, because byali will rotate to CT and we're going to kill him. byali did that and we won the round. After this, I said "Now they're scared we're going B again through arch, now we'll fake two guys going arch but we split A." And it worked really well, because pasha tried to kill fer, he killed fer but I traded him, and the guys going to site had good trades and we won the round.

I think they beat a lot of teams because a lot of teams tried to do the same thing but not as fast. They were going B, but really slowly from arch. The solution I had for the game was that we needed to go fast, do smokes and cross to arch fast because we'd kill the rotator. And it worked really well.

We talked about Train yesterday and you said you were really confident on it, what were your strengths on the CT side where you made the comeback from a 3-12 deficit? 

The CT side now was good because fer can help boltz. boltz has a passive style on B, so they had good positions to secure B, fer always had a cross-fire with boltz. It's hard to play against two players like that who play really well together. Sometimes they were one site and one barrels and sometimes they just played really far from B. They have good combinations that work really well. boltz's style is really passive, which helps him on B a lot.

Considering you haven't played Cache in a long time, at least offline, did you feel like Train was a must-win for you?

We wanted to finish this game 3-0. We were very confident on Mirage, but VP played really well and we sucked a little bit on the CT side. Mirage was really weird for us, because we played it really, really badly today. We wanted to finish this game 3-0 because we didn't play Cache much, we had a short time playing with boltz and we just played the normal maps we like to play, so Overpass, Mirage, Train, and Cobble. We didn't play Cache at all.

Cache was tough for SK who hadn't played the map offline since the Major

I changed my role on Cache, I play felps' role right now and boltz plays on B. But we don't have good combinations to finish the round. We had a good T side, but on CT side, TACO changed his site from B and he wasn't too comfortable, because he only played Cache with me once. fer and boltz didn't have any setups, so they just tried to play, that's why it was really hard for us.

Touching on the big finish on Cobblestone, you once again had to pull off a bit of a comeback on the CT side and go through such a back and forth in the overtimes. It looked like you figured out what to do as CT later on in the second half, so tell me about the ending of regulation, what pushed you into the overtime?

In the beginning we won the pistol, but it started being really hard, because we had a bad split A. We did a strat for A that didn't work really well. After that we tried to split B from drop and platform which didn't work either. I think fer made a mistake, we had good communication in that round and said there were two guys on rock and one on site, so someone killed the guy on site and I killed one guy on rock. When fer saw one guy on rock going into the site, he didn't try to kill him because he thought there was one more at rock, but that guy was dead. This round was really crucial, because we were going to break them, but fer misunderstood the communication.

In general they played really well on the CT side, it was hard to counter, but we started going on A because Snax and TaZ started making mistakes there. They started pushing sometimes, doing really weird pushes, so we tried to punish it and we started going A fast when we killed them.

As CT, we lost the pistol, they had a good pistol against us, NEO had a good shot against fer so we lost the 3v3. After that we started playing normal, we started playing more passive and waited for them to do a strat, we knew how to counter every strat they do. We played well on B, but there was one round that was crucial for us, they lost a lot of rounds on B and I said "now they'll go A." But FalleN had a bad rotation, I'm not sure why, and we lost this round, but we then won the next one and broke their economy again.

We had one round when they started making sounds on B, but I was really close to the wall and I heard everything, so I heard they were going A and I knew they were going 1 drop and 4 A. But FalleN missed two shots because VP had the timing on him. In the rest of the rounds, we played really well, we had the comeback to 15-15. The game was really hard, because we started committing mistakes, when we were CT, we won just one round, but on T side we won two really, really hard rounds.

The 2v4 situation was amazing and gave us the confidence again, I think VP lost the confidence there. When we had the second overtime, I told the guys that we needed to go A, that VP played badly on A. So we went once to A, we won, so I said we should go A again, we went there the second time and won, and then I said we should use the last pause to explain the last strat. We paused, I said "Guys, we're going to smoke B really, really fast, we go drop because they'll over-rotate" and we won this round. fer killed the guy on drop and they made a lot of bad rotations, the A rotator went to drop and got killed, I went to B and killed the guy who wanted to rotate to A. This round was really crucial for us, because we knew we could win the game after 3-0.

That game was really hard, because every time when we play against VP, they're not that skilled but really smart in playing the game. When we play against a team that's smart, it's harder than when we play against a team that just has aim. VP impressed me a lot this tournament, they lost 0-2 to us in the group stage, they went to the final and that game was not the same game we played in the first game. Playing against them was really amazing, the BO5 was really amazing and great to play.

You mentioned Virtus.pro's mistakes on A and it looked like boltz really exploited A long, what did you make of his performance on Cobblestone especially?

boltz had a good game, I think he won every duel against Snax, but that's why I'm saying they were playing really bad on A, because TaZ or Snax tried to play solo and they tried to over-peek every time. Sometimes they tried to push mid, sometimes they tried to peek long A, sometimes it can work but sometimes it can be really bad. The crucial rounds they lost were because boltz killed the guy who made those mistakes. boltz played really well, he was patient enough to wait for them to commit those mistakes and he always punished them.

boltz played a big part in SK's comeback on Cobblestone

This is your fourth MVP medal this year, your seventh overall. Do you think you've played well enough so far to be #1 in the top 20 this year once more?

I don't know. I think I had a good beginning of the year. I think I played well for half of the year, but after ECS I started playing a little bit worse. My teammates started playing better than me and I think I just went down a bit. After the vacation, it was hard for me, because the team wasn't doing too well inside the game, we started playing really bad after the break.

Before New York I started playing more. When I come to the tournament, I play every day, which started helping me a lot, because I like to do this. I started doing this in New York and I played really well, so this tournament I did the same, I play every day at the tournament and at the house. I play maybe 13 hours a day right now, so I'm playing a lot better, I have more confidence and my aim is good. I can't say much about the top 20, but I think I have a great chance to hold the first place this year, I just need to keep doing what I'm doing right now.

The last time you changed a player, you started with a great tournament in Las Vegas but then dropped off, do you think that's not going to happen this time with boltz perhaps fitting better into the system right from the start?

I think when we start losing too much, it's not because we play bad or because everyone knows what we are doing. It's because sometimes players stop working really hard when we win two, three, or four tournaments. It happened with fnx, it happened with felps a little bit. We never wanted to change a player, because it's not good in the middle of the season, it's not good to change players and just practice three days for a tournament just because the player isn't doing well.

I think we should work harder, when we start losing, we forget to work hard, right now everyone has that in their minds that we need to work really hard to hold our position in the ranking. We are a team that needs to work really hard, because everyone knows how to play against us sometimes. With boltz, we are more hungry to win, because we can work really well together, it's easy to talk with each other. Everyone understands each other and it's easy to play with boltz, so I think our team will be fixed for the whole year.

It's possible you might not be able to play certain tournaments with boltz, such as ECS and the Major at the very least, do you see that as a problem?

It will be a problem. I think we can play Oakland with boltz, Pro League too, but ECS... It's fine, we understand, this isn't a time to transfer players, we fucked it up. We know about it, we won't try to complain if they don't want to do this for us. I think we can play three tournaments with boltz, which will be really good, BLAST, Pro League, and Oakland. But the Major will be the hardest for us, because we can't play with boltz, he's locked. But we can survive it. We will practice with boltz whether or not he will be able to play the tournament and we'll be able to play well again next year.