ALEX: "We were doing so many stupid mistakes, losing anti-ecos; we need to sort that out"

We caught up with Alex "⁠ALEX⁠" McMeekin after Vitality secured a spot in the playoffs of ESL One Cologne and discussed the long road they took, anti-eco issues, and more.

Following an opening loss to Ninjas in Pyjamas on Dust2, Vitality went through the lower-bracket, defeating ENCE, fnatic and HEROIC to advance to the next stage of the tournament.

Ahead of Vitality's meeting with NRG, we interviewed ALEX to hear his thoughts on the format of ESL One Cologne, the matches they played, and the upcoming quarter-final.

You just made it through the lower bracket, the hard way I guess. What are your initial feelings after this match against Heroic that got you into the playoffs?

Tired. It was a tough game, playing two BO3s today and having two overtimes, and then 16-14, 16-13, it was very tiring but we are happy obviously. It is my first time in the playoffs in the Cathedral so it is going to be fun.

During this match there were a couple of anti-eco issues...

[laughs and shakes his head]

...tell me a bit about that, what was going in?

I'm not sure actually, it seemed like whatever we tried we would just lose them anyway. I don't know what to do anymore. Luckily it wasn't on my side that we were losing them this time so I'm kinda happy with that, I'll speak with NBK- later. [laughs]. But yeah, I'm not sure, maybe because we keep losing them we are a bit scared of losing them now, and we don't face as we should and play them as we should. So we will have to have a discussion about them and hopefully sort it out.

Something that did happen on your side, the T-side, was that NiP opening game. What was going on there, what was the struggle to break through their CT side about?

Even after watching that game, I'm still not sure, I think Astralis struggled against them earlier as well, I'm just not sure why because watching the game back they didn't do anything special. We tried everything, a B hit, a mid hit, mid-to-B hit, everything, and it just didn't work. Maybe it was just on the day and maybe they have a really good CT side because Astralis didn't get any T rounds either.

As we touched on earlier, you went down to the lower bracket to start and you had to play ENCE in the first elimination game. Some people have been vocal about the format and especially the thing which happened to you being an issue. What are your thoughts on it?

Obviously, it wouldn't be an issue if we won our BO1, same for ENCE, but because the level in CS is so close so now, when you can ban three maps and you are an up and coming team, if you can get on to one of your very good maps then you have a good chance of beating anyone, really. So yeah, I'm not a fan of the format, I understand it is necessary for scheduling and stuff, but if they could find a way to not have it like this, I think everyone would be happier. But yeah, it is just how it is, I guess.

You are moving on to the playoffs, NRG is the first opponent in the quarter-finals, what are your expectations from that game?

I think it is going to be really tough because they always make it to the semis and they are playing really well here. I'm not sure how the Liquid game went because we were playing here, but I think there was an overtime, they are obviously playing really well. We are not 100% sure what they are going to be doing because they probably haven't played that many different maps yet. So yeah, it is going to be a tough one because we kind of struggle against teams we can't prepare for right now. But I think if we don't play like the first three days we should win.

If you DON'T play like the first days?

Yeah, because we were playing terribly. [laughs] No disrespect to the other teams, but we were doing so many mistakes, stupid mistakes, losing anti-ecos, people not listening to what I'm saying. We are going out Monster, I'm saying just triple nade this guy on Barrels, we do it, we kill him, and then for some reason RpK goes running out and there is no reason for it. And that is just one example, everyone has been doing something stupid, including myself, so we just need to sort that out.