sergej: "If we play our game we can be top 10"

We close out the live coverage from StarSeries Season 6 with an interview by Jere "⁠sergej⁠" Salo, the tournament's MVP.

ENCE lifted the trophy in Kiev, as ENCE beat Vega Squadron after five grueling maps, to bag the $125,000 first place prize at StarSeries i-League Season 6. To get there, ENCE beat teams like BIG, MOUZ, and OpTic.

sergej, the StarSeries i-League Season 6 MVP, ran us through the match with Vega Squadron, how ENCE felt about the matchup before jumping into the server, dealing with the CIS side's aggression, and where he sees his team in comparison to the world's best.

Before you started this tournament, did you see yourself lifting the trophy?

Yeah, we felt really confident. We had good practices and a few good online results, so we were confident we could win this event if we played our best.

Before the final you only lost one map, to BIG. When you saw the final was going to be against Vega what did you think?

We actually thought it was going to be the easy match. We had beaten OpTic, BIG, mouz, and those teams, so we thought that Vega would be easier. But the pressure got to us in the final, a lot of us haven't been in this situation before, so the pressure got to us and they actually played really well.

Not too much of a crowd, but there was one, and they were all with Vega. In an interview this morning, jR said he hoped maybe that would make you feel a bit more pressure. Did it?

No, the crowd didn't get into our head. Well, at least mine, I don't know about the others, but I don't think so. The only thing about the crowd was that we could obviously hear it, so when we had a pause it was hard to talk when the crowd was cheering so loud.

As you said, you kind of expected it to be a bit easier because Vega isn't considered as strong as some of the other teams you beat, but it went to five maps and was pretty close in the end. What were the keys of the match?

Our first pick was Train, and we had a lot of confidence on it. We had a good CT side, we got 10 rounds, but on T side we lost like seven rounds that we shouldn't have, which was a bit unlucky for us. We played poorly at times, and were a bit unlucky other times.

Inferno is a good map for us, we are confident on it all of the time. We won the first pistol and the game just started rolling. We lost the CT side pistol, I think, and saved a few rounds, but when we got our money it was easy for us again. They couldn't get much done in the full buy rounds.

Dust2 has been a bit shaky for us in the past few months, but it was our best map for a long time when we made the team, we used to never lose on it, and we beat some good teams on it. Then it kind of fell off. We haven't practiced on it that much, but we played a good CT side overall. On T side when they started to get money that made the game a bit harder because we didn't have that much confidence attacking. I got a good 1vs2 and after that we got rolling and were able to close it out.

On Mirage we had a bad start, but we were able to get nine rounds which was more than enough for us on T side. Then we lost the second pistol round and they completely locked us down on the CT side, we got reset and couldn't do much.

On Overpass we knew we were going to need a strong T side because our CT side can be a bit harsh sometimes. We got the pistol round and the second round, but then we lost the third to an almost full eco which was kind of bad, but we managed to get the next round and start rolling. Every time they won we reset them, and we got a few lucky rounds but we got a 12-3 lead. We lost the second pistol round, then the first gun round, and it started to look pretty bad, but we took a pause, managed to calm down, and we were able to close the game.

Did you say anything particular during the pause?

We just talked about keeping our focus, and that even though we were winning, it was the last map and the game wasn't over, that we have to focus until the end.

You mentioned the aggressive style that Vega has, which can be hard to deal with at times. How did you manage it? Had you talked about it beforehand, and how did it go in-game?

We knew before that their playstyle is aggressive, so we just thought that if we play our own game and play together, that should work. Also, that we needed to use our utility well so that they couldn't be that aggressive, but it worked out for them.

It's the first bigger international LAN you win. You beat teams like mouz, OpTic, and BIG. Where do you see yourselves as a team?

I think if we play our game we can be top 10. We still do many mistakes we shouldn't do at this level, but if we fix our mistakes we could even be top 5.

You think you can keep this level up playing against elite level teams?

Yeah, I think we can. We'll see next week at EPICENTER.