Keoz: "We just expected the aggression, we knew what FURIA were going to do"

In another interview from the StarLadder Major New Challengers stage, Nicolas "⁠Keoz⁠" Dgus discussed Syman's surprising run so far and told us about his transition from the Francophone scene to the CIS region.

Pulling off some of the biggest surprises at the Major so far, Syman are now in the 2-2 pool after taking down Vitality in the opening match and eliminating FURIA over the course of a convincing series in the fourth round.

After their match against the Brazilians, the Belgian-Ukrainian player Keoz sat down with us to discuss Syman's upsets and how he transitioned into the CIS scene earlier this year.

As you are such an inexperienced squad, you haven't really played at an international level at all in your careers, what kind of expectations did you have going into the Major?

We were really hungry to go through, so our mindset is the same as at the Minor. We are very hungry players, we want to show what we are capable of here. Our expectations are just to go through because if other teams can do it, why not us? We can do a run like ENCE for example, why not?

How did you manage to beat a team like Vitality, massive favorites going into that match, did you put in a lot of preparation for them?

Before this Major, we had a little bit of a bootcamp and there we weren't working on our opponents but more on ourselves. For example, I said in an earlier interview that we worked on the CT sides because it was a big problem at the Minor, and it seems to be paying off right now.

You also had a loss to North where you almost made a huge comeback on Train, can you talk me through that match and what you were missing to close it out, after all?

On T side I felt like we didn't play our game. North were playing very well on their CT side, but we kind of expected what they would do, and even though we expected it, I didn't feel like we played our game and round after round we were just getting crushed. At the end, we got two rounds somehow, it was 11-2 and then 11-4, and then we were like 'okay, guys, we always make insane comebacks, let's make one again' and starting from the pistol we were coming back. At 13-13, we 4v2 and valde did an insane run and f*cked us.

This last match against FURIA looked convincing from your side, they are known to be a very aggressive team, were you ready for that? Was the matchup a good fit for you?

Yeah, I think it really fit us because we prepared for this match yesterday and saw they are very, very aggressive. Even though we knew they were aggressive when they upset insane teams, when we watched the demos yesterday we were surprised at how aggressive they were. We just expected that, we felt good for today and thought that we would beat them because we knew what they were going to do.

Can you tell me about time with Syman and joining them back in March? From what I saw, you've only been playing in French-speaking teams in your career, how come the switch to the CIS region happened? Was it simply this offer from Syman that came in?

Basically, how I came into Syman, I was just playing some Rank S to make some money and then I played with some of the Syman players, my teammates now, and as I knew they were speaking Russian I talked to them in Russian, as well. I had some good games there in Rank S and they just went to me and asked me to join.