TaZ: "It meant the world to me, beating a team that did not believe in me"

Collin "CarbonDogma" Davis caught up with Wiktor "⁠TaZ⁠" Wojtas while at the ESEA MDL S29 Global Challenge to hear his thoughts on Kinguin's performance at their latest events.

In Dallas, Texas, Kinguin fell to 3DMAX in the Global Challenge grand final, but they took solace from their victory over Virtus.pro in the consolidation final of the ESL Pro League relegation stage, which earned them a spot in the next edition of the showpiece tournament.

To get to know more about TaZ's view on Kinguin's run in the United States, their performance in the last few months and other topics, you can read our interview with the Polish veteran, who sat down with Dust2.us's Collin "CarbonDogma" Davis after defeating Grayhound in the Global Challenge semi-final stage.

Let's rewind a bit to the MDL playoffs, which were online and you made it to third place. You lost to Virtus.pro and then you beat Epsilon, so did the playoffs go how you thought they would?

Honestly, losing to Virtus.pro was not our plan, we actually felt that we should have taken the game, but we have been constantly throwing away our games, for like two months or something. We simply can't close out games, we make stupid mistakes, especially individually, and that's something we need to work on if we want to keep moving forward.

And then in the relegation here, you lost to Virtus.pro again. Do you think they have a good matchup against your team?

I actually think that we have a good matchup, but I also think that they probably think the same. It's just Polish teams facing each other, anything can happen. At the moment, it's more about showing who the number one team in Poland is, which unfortunately means nothing to the world. We simply are bad, we simply play bad Counter-Strike, we make a lot of mistakes, we don't have certain fundamentals that we should have on a high level.

So it's a work in progress, working constantly and hoping that we can finally join the top ranks and stop losing stupid rounds and matches. I can't even say anything about the Virtus.pro game, or about any other games, because we are making so many wrong moves that I don't know if we are losing because they are better skill wise or not.

After the final match (vs Virtus.pro) you seemed to be pretty emotional. How did you feel after that game?

This was the first big game that actually meant something for us. It was the first game counting for something big, which is EPL. It is huge for us, for Polish teams especially, because this gives you the chance to practice against top teams and to play in playoffs as well – the top 8 or 7 teams qualify for the finals, so it's also a good shot if you put in tons of work. You can see how Windigo performed in EPL, it was very impressive. So there's something to hope for, there's something to work on... I mean, it meant the world to me, beating a team that did not believe in me... it means a lot to me.

Here at the Global Challenge, in the winners' match against 3DMAX, you had a big choke. What do you think happened in that match?

It's the same reason that I told in the beginning. We just simply can't close out games, we make very stupid individual mistakes, we can't play together in certain situations, and we kind of panic... I have no idea what's happening sometimes. We need to go back, we need to sit down, and just work a lot because that's not fun to watch.

Then, in the semi-final against Grayhound, it was quite a close match, especially on the last two maps. How do you think you managed to pull off the win in the end?

We have more experience, I guess. We had some nice calls when we paused, Loord had some nice ideas as CT. We gave away Overpass, unfortunately, we had two map points before we lost... it was an unlucky scenario. But I think that with our experience we were able to make good calls and stack sites when it mattered.

Any closing comments about the upcoming EPL season or the Minor qualifier, for example?

I'm excited. I think the Minor qualifier will be extremely hard, we will do our best to qualify. We will see. I'm just extremely happy that we are going to EPL, and I think that the guys should also be proud of this achievement because we started this year with nothing, we had a rough start, we had to play a lot of games without much time for practice. But we made it in the end just like we wanted, and hopefully, next year, it will be a lot better.