ropz: "We are becoming more consistent"

We spoke to Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool from MOUZ after his team secured a win over TYLOO, moving to the 2-0 bracket.

The Estonian was one of the stand-out players in the first series that his team won in Kiev, the one against North, but was more subdued today as MOUZ picked up a 2-0 victory over the Chinese side.

In our interview, ropz answered questions about the opening game, TYLOO's Inferno and the loss to Liquid in Dallas.

The opening game you played North was a scrappy victory, but is getting a positive start to the tournament still the key thing to take away?

Yeah, I guess the main thing is that we started off with a win, we got some good vibes from that. Indeed, we did play really sloppy, we managed to win Dust2 somehow, usually we don't do comebacks that often. We even started T side because we knew that we have a bad CT side, but we came back on the CT side, so that somehow just worked out for us. Then we played that really sloppy Mirage, just not a good game from us, and the final map was Train, we knew how they played, so we countered them there and we closed it out.

You got drawn against TyLoo and they obviously impressed in Sydney and they beat Na`Vi here. Going into the veto, you decided to not go for Mirage, you picked Train instead. Tell me about that decision, was it more of your team not feeling that good on Mirage as you were two months ago, or were you just countering their weakest map in the pool?

We knew exactly what the maps were going to be in the veto. It was Train, Inferno and Mirage. They picked Mirage against Na`Vi yesterday so we knew that it was probably going to be the third map, so we can just leave it there. We searched for a map that they are weak on and that is Train, we are comfortable on it. They picked Inferno and we knew exactly how they were going to play on Inferno, they just played with some explosions, fast rounds, we just knew how to win the game.

It seemed like on T-side Inferno they had some good timings in some rounds, but they just didn't win them in the end. How did that develop from your side?

We started out pretty slow, we won the pistol round but then they won three or four gun rounds. On the CT side, we tried to counter their mid take, but our coach called a timeout and said that it wasn't a good thing to do. We also realized that they were doing some apps contact plays, which caught us off guard even though we knew that they were going to do them, because we tried to search for some picks before it in mid, and then fall back.

After that we started playing more from the sites, playing passive, we started winning more rounds and that's how we closed out the CT side.

In Dallas you finished 5-6th and the playoff game against Liquid is the one you lost. You could potentially meet them here, you are obviously two of the favorites, is that a match you are looking forward to, potentially beating them and getting the revenge?

Yeah, definitely, we were pretty disappointed with our result in Dallas, we felt like we could've gone to the finals but something was just off in the game versus Liquid, we should've won that Mirage game, it was really close, but they just had some good aim, good strats. We are looking forward to our next opponents, getting some revenge on Liquid would be nice.

At the last two tournaments you had a 1.06 rating, that's not bad but it is below the average you had in the last year or so in mouz. How are you feeling about your individual form at the moment?

I feel like I'm more consistent. In our team, everyone knows what we expect from each other. There is a system, we know how to play with each other, we feel really comfortable, we know what we want to do and I know how I want to play. I can do my own thing and I know what my team is doing on the other side of the map. That's a good thing because we are becoming more consistent, we are hitting more playoff spots and that's the main thing.