TOAO: "I tended to be nervous when I was the IGL; Furlan taking over was a relief"

After AGO took the win in the all-Polish matchup, we spoke with Mateusz "⁠TOAO⁠" Zawistowski about the game, the Polish scene and the changes his team made.

TOAO's team had a poor CT side on the opening map of the series, Train, as Virtus.pro picked them apart to finish with a 9-6 lead. With another pistol round added in the second half, Filip "⁠NEO⁠" Kubski and co. were shortly 14-6 up, looking for a swift map victor.

However, with Michał "⁠snatchie⁠" Rudzki dominating with the AWP, AGO were able to bring back the game and win it in overtime. AGO looked much better on Inferno, which they closed out 16-11 to take the series win over their Polish rivals.

The bracket draw came out, you were drawn against Virtus.pro. There isn't a lot of rivalry there in terms of playing each other, because you didn't get to play much, especially on LAN, but was it exciting to see that draw, were you hyped for the matchup?

We kind of expected to be drawn against Virtus.pro, I mean, there was a possibility that it might happen. It's an exciting match to watch and as you said, we haven't played offline against Virtus.pro. So yeah, we kind of expected it and we are happy that we played them, we finally met offline and it was an exciting match to play and to watch, I guess.

Were there any special preparations going into this match, did you do something that you wouldn't do ordinarily, if you weren't playing against VP?

We prepared as normal, as usual. We learned from before, we had to learn it from our mistakes that if we do too much stuff, it might not work. We just prepared normally, did our stuff with a few tweaks here and there, just to play well against them.

At one point on the first map it was 14-6 for them, did you get into that map cold? What was the issue at the start of Train?

On Train we changed the setup [recently], that was the main issue, we didn't practice a lot with this setup and against them it was something new, for me especially, I didn't know how to react to things. They managed to have a really good score as T. We still knew we could come back because they won two pistols. We kept our focus, tried to get back into the game. Eventually, it worked, snatchie went HAM, that was good. (laughs)

He had a lot of AWP kills on that map, a lot of entries as well. Talking to him, is there something that he said, specific things that he did, that made him play so well on Train?

We knew that he was playing well, and when he is playing well we are trying to make him feel loose, so he can find more frags. As an AWPer, on the T side of Train, it was very important for him to find entries, and after he did, it was much easier for us. He was always calling what he wanted to do and we tried to tweak our strats towards that.

You won Inferno after that, it was a 2-0, so the first time you meet VP on LAN you beat them, kind of convincingly I would say considering you lost all those pistols, so how does that feel, what do you take away from this game?

I wish we could've beaten them before, when they were playing very well. Right now, it feels very good, but we felt like we should beat them because we are trending up and they are trending down. We knew that we should win.

From what I last heard, Furlan took over the in-game leadership from you. Some players, when they in-game lead, they feel more comfortable fragging, they make things work around themselves. How has that been for you as a player, moving away from the in-game leadership?

The most important thing for me was that I tended to be nervous in the game when I was the in-game leader, because there is a lot of pressure on you then. When Furlan took over, it was a relief for me, I'm feeling looser, but I'm still doing what the team needs. I'm kind of in the support role, when the team needs me, I'm going in, and as you saw on Inferno, I might do more, but mostly I'm just doing stuff for the team, what they need. When Furlan is in-game leading, his fragging is going down a little bit, we can see that as he is normally shooting headshots in the first three bullets and now he is struggling with it.

Recently you played the Polish Championship, that you won against Kinguin in the final. I guess it was a expected result, but how do you feel about the Polish scene and the new Kinguin team, do they have potential to go forward?

We always struggle against Polish teams, so despite the fact that people expected us to win, we didn't expect it. We've always lost to Polish teams, we struggle playing against mixes, and most of the teams are mixes in Poland. So we were very happy to be the first team in Poland and now we beat Virtus.pro, so it's only better. About Kinguin, I don't know, they need more time I think.