woxic: "I'm really impressed by Invictus' executing; I think they have great potential"

We had a quick chat with Özgür "⁠woxic⁠" Eker after MOUZ survived a tough elimination match against Invictus at the beginning of day three in Turkey.

Living up to their reputation for slow starts, MOUZ have once again stepped into the tournament on the wrong foot, conceding opening series of the Turkish event to North to fall to Group A's lower bracket.

Facing Invictus on day three in an elimination series, the European mixture had to fight back from a 3-12 deficit on Dust2 and from 10-13 on Train, escaping the series by the skin of their teeth with two 16-14 victories. After the match, we caught up with woxic to ask him about the team's affinity for bad starts and the surprisingly close encounter with the Chinese-Russian side.

First of all, tell me about the loss to North and your affinity to lose the opening matches of the tournament. You've almost been joking around about it on Twitter, why do you think that keeps happening?

Really, in all interviews, it doesn't matter at which tournament we are, I always say we're always losing. I don't know, when we're starting the first game something is different. Maybe it's because of time, they're early games so maybe somebody didn't sleep enough or didn't focus enough or didn't wake up yet. Maybe that's why it's happening. In our first games, if they're in the morning, I'm not seeing the same full focus like when we play other times. We also started so badly today against Invictus. The communication is not at the top, shooting is not at the top, it just takes time, but it shouldn't be like this. When you play against good teams like North, you will lose, so we need to work on that.

You almost lost today, as well, did Invictus surprise you?

I was talking to some of them and I asked them how they are with communication, they said they are using three languages. I told them they were pretty good at executing, I'm really impressed about it. They know when they need to play together, they are exploding a site together, not like one by one. And he said to me that they are a new team. I think they have great potential.

You're going up against this fnatic for the first time later today, what do you think about the matchup?

I think it's going to be a great matchup because we always play better against great teams, who are like top-15 teams. They are doing more expected things, you can read their game, but when it's like Invictus or some other team that is a pretty new lineup, they are doing random things, so they are catching you in unexpected situations. I think the fnatic matchup is good for us, we are really confident about it. Right now we have already warmed up, basically, and after two or three hours we are going to be at top communication and top shooting.

I've been asking around about the way this tournament is set up, there are lots of opportunities to slack off, go to the beach, but it is a huge tournament at the same time. How are you approaching this?

When we lost our first game, we had kind of a one-day break and everybody went to the beach, to the pool. Before your game you shouldn't go, it can make you tired, so that's why when you have free time, at least one day, we do these kinds of things, it can even be drinking or other stuff. But otherwise, for example no one is going to go to the pool right now because we have a game coming up in a couple of hours. But after the fnatic game, if we win or lose, it doesn't matter, we can go to the pool or to the beach.