Snax: "We're confident whether it's NiP, mousesports, or MIBR; we just want to prove ourselves"

After Virtus.pro beat Ninjas in Pyjamas to advance to the semi-finals at the V4 Future Sports Festival, we had a chat with Janusz "⁠Snax⁠" Pogorzelski about the team's roster issues throughout the year and the Hungarian tournament.

The Polish squad are now through to the semi-finals after taking down Ninjas in Pyjamas in a two-map series, in which they looked convincing as they won Mirage 16-9 and Nuke 16-14, denying a comeback attempt from 5-15 from the Swedish side.

In the first interview from the playoffs in Hungary, Snax talked to us about the signing of Tomasz "⁠phr⁠" Wójcik and the roster issues Virtus.pro faced throughout the year, as well as about his team's win against Ninjas in Pyjamas, with which they set up a meeting against MOUZ in the semis.

Let's start with phr, whom you just recently signed full-time after trialing him for a bit, can you tell me about that decision and what he brings?

About phr, I think his role is really difficult. It kind of reminds me of my role in mousesports when I joined them, so I know that feeling, how it is when you're playing that kind of role. Like I said, it's really hard, and it has really helped us because we needed a guy like this. We have a lot of people that like to play aggressive, so we tried to make the roles in the team and find out path.

You had a lot of changes this year, problems with finding the right lineup, parting ways with TOAO, OKOLICIOUZ, and byali before finally coming to this roster. Do you think you've finally found the right five?

Yeah, I think so. I think the players in the team right now are really good, we understand each other very well, overall our roles are pretty good in the team and everyone has something to add to the team and to the playstyle. I think we have a really good lineup, it's going to be good for the future.

Even a year ago or a year-and-a-half ago, Virtus.pro were in a different spot to where it is now, is there any pressure coming from the organization on the team and the results?

I think there is no pressure at all. For sure, they want results, every organization does, so I think it's a normal thing that every team has pressure on themselves. Maybe not the top-three, of course (laughs), but otherwise you just have it. That's a normal thing. We're just trying to bootcamp a lot, play a lot of stuff, and trying to fight versus better teams if we look at the ranking. We still have some time. If not, VP would have fired us, we would quit the organization and even the team if it wasn't working in the long term.

Speaking of playing against better teams, you managed to go through to the playoffs here and met NiP, a name you haven't played in the same competition with for quite a long time. How was it, competing against this level of a team again?

It was pretty nice, I can say. We did a lot of work before the game, we had good preparation. Actually, I didn't watch Mirage, the guys just told me what they are doing and stuff like this, and I just managed to flex it into the game. I think we played really well on the T side, we had 10 rounds, so it was a pretty good half. Also, I think we won both pistols, so I also think we have had good pistols at this tournament, at every tournament kuben is preparing those rounds. We're just trying to play our style, so we play fast, aggressive, we can also change our pace, if we just want to go slowly, we don't have any problem to do it.

Tell me about what happened on the T side of Nuke, though. It took you a long time before you managed to close it, only in the last round of regulation.

Yeah. When it was 15-5, I think, we wanted to do a split from ramp and outside, I think it was just a matter of one kill, if Vegi killed the guy on the lower site in the vent, we would have probably won 16-5 at most. But Nuke is CT-sided, sometimes you just need one kill on the T side and you will win the round, and sometimes you will get really wrecked on the T side, it's normal on the map. In the end, I felt like I understood how they were playing, and so I decided to repeat the same round but to go up on the A site after showing ourselves on B. I felt like f0rest would go to the ramp, so we could easily come back to the A site because f0rest wouldn't be outside and couldn't catch the players rotating from underground. We were calm to the end and that's why we won.

Outside of these problems at the end, it was a quite a convincing series, does that give you confidence going into the semi-finals, where you'll play mousesports?

Maybe not confidence, it didn't get our confidence up, we are still confident whether it is NiP, mousesports, or MIBR. We just want to prove ourselves. We knew we were capable of shooting good headshots, we have really young guys like Vegi, MICHU, they are beasts, so I think they can show a great level, and with my experience of in-game leading and overall, I can show them how to do it, as well.