NEO: "The change brought a lot of freshness and a boost of motivation"

Virtus.pro went 0-1 after the first day of StarSeries i-League Season 4, losing to MOUZ in a three-map series. Today, the Poles secured their first LAN win with Michał "⁠MICHU⁠" Müller, edging out MVP PK.

Virtus.pro didn't expect a lot from MVP on Nuke

HLTV.org managed to get hold of Filip "⁠NEO⁠" Kubski who revealed that he is back to calling and that the AWP will be passed around between his teammates.

You added MICHU in place of TaZ, what's going on in terms of roles now? Are you back to calling, what's the situation with the AWP?

Yeah, I'm back to calling, but about the AWP I think we decided to do it like it was in the old days. We usually didn't really have a dedicated AWPer, we had a few guys that could pick it up, so that is what we did here. Of course, pasha is still the main AWPer but I can be an AWPer as well and Snax can do it, depending on positions. It's more of a loose style in the AWP case. About general roles, I think MICHU fits the team pretty well, it's still early to say, but of course, I think that the change brought, most of all, a lot of freshness and a boost of motivation.

MICHU played with you as a stand-in previously, a few times. Was picking him up already set in stone, something you had in mind as - if it's ever going to happen, it's going to be him? Did you even consider any other Polish players?

There are tons of good Polish players nowadays, but MICHU was probably the main option since we knew him, and snax and byali played with him back in the days. But yeah, he was the main pick for us for a longer period of time.

What are the goals and expectations like for you at this event?

It's great that this tournament has this format, Swiss with BO3 is probably the best you can have because it removes the randomness from the game since BO1 is a bit random. And the Swiss format is really nice. It's really nice for us before Katowice which is one of the main goals for our team every year. So we are here for more than 10 days, we have the practice rooms, we can practice and playing so many games helps us improve a lot. Obviously, you improve much more during the tests which are the games here, than in practice matches. That's why it's really great for us to have the opportunity to play here.

About goals, I'm always aiming to win the whole thing, but it's obviously a difficult task, but we are just taking it step-by-step and trying to improve every day.

You started the tournament with a game against mousesports. Mirage was the last map, you had the early lead but couldn't close it out. What do you remember about that matchup?

I think we made a lot of mistakes in that game. Obviously, both teams did, but we made more mistakes and that's why we lost. They were just better at the time. Like I said, there is still a lot of stuff, we have new strats, new roles, new positions for some people, so we learn from every game. We learned our lessons from that game and we are just waiting for the next one.

Playing against MVP, some people would say that you got a lucky draw, but the game ended up being pretty tough in the end. Tell me about the veto first, you let in Nuke which is practically a new map now with a lot of changes. What was the thinking there, are you confident on the new version?

Well, Nuke was our main map so we obviously had to work on it. Of course, we haven't played it so much and with the changes a couple of days ago it makes it even more difficult. But then, I think we felt confident with the map veto because we knew which maps to pick and we didn't expect them to know much about Nuke, but in the end, they had some pretty good stuff on it as well. It was a very intense game in the end.

Playing against them, an Asian team, is there something there was particularly hard to deal with for you?

Obviously, if a team is not playing tournaments with top teams so often, they bring some new stuff and they can surprise people. So sometimes we have underdogs doing well at a tournament, advancing to the playoffs, for example QB.Fire, but next time people are going to be ready for them, so it's going to be more difficult.

But yeah, Asians have their own style and solo is a great old-school player, we used to play against him like 10 years ago. He used to be great and he had a great game today. He is experienced enough to lead the team and it feels like they have a team with a potential to be really good, just like TyLoo. Watching their game against SK yesterday, they had the advantage at some point, so we knew that they are able to play really well and that it was not going to be easy, since we have a new lineup