bubble after beating Gambit: "In the end, the result says that we were the better team"

After upsetting Gambit with a stand-in, Fiend IGL Kamen "⁠bubble⁠" Kostadinov sat down with HLTV for a quick talk about the game, the event, and the future.

Fiend had a rough start to V4 Future Sports Festival, losing their opening match of the play-in portion of the event to Budapest Five and struggling through an elimination match 2-1 against Wisla Krakow.

Since then they have improved with each match, emphasising that fact by beating pre-tournament favourites and recent Major semi-finalists Gambit 16-9 on Dust2 in the opening game of the main event.

IGL for the Bulgarian squad bubble sat down with HLTV to discuss how his team managed that upset win, his expectations for the tournament, stand-in Georgi "⁠SHiPZ⁠" Grigorov's performance, and goals for the future.

Congratulations on a great upset win against Gambit, the #3 team in the world. How did you do it?

I have to be honest, my teammates didn’t want to play Ancient. I was ready to play Ancient against Gambit, and they really wanted to play Dust2, so I told them it is your responsibility, you guys decide. If you want to play Dust2, so be it. That’s how we chose to play Dust2, and it seems like everyone was on point, on fire, we were hitting our shots and we had good trades.

We also did make some mistakes in crucial rounds, like I think we lost two rounds 5v3 in crucial rounds, but in the end, the result says that we were the
better team.

What made you want to play Ancient?

Well basically, we practiced against them on Ancient when they were preparing for the Major, and I saw saw some leaks in their strategy. I felt like it would be easy for me to outsmart them, or find the leaks and use it against them. That’s why I wanted to play Ancient, but yeah, my team decided to play Dust2.

How did you feel about Dust2 considering Gambit beat you 16-5 on the map way back in DreamHack Masters Spring?

Me personally, I thought that we were the underdogs, but I really had a feeling that we have a chance to win. If everyone is feeling comfortable on this map, and they want to play it versus one of the best teams, that should be it. Yeah, I had a feeling that we had a chance.

Taking a look at the play-in, your team had a slow start, losing to Budapest Five and scraping a close series against Wisla Krakow to avoid elimination. Why do you think that was the case?

I think the only reason we started slow is because we didn’t have any practice, not even one hour with SHiPZ. At the last minute v1c7oR had some medical issues, and we took SHiPZ at the last minute, so we didn’t have any practice.

That’s the sloppy thing, it’s really hard to IGL with a mix, and there’s a lot of pressure on me. Thank god SHiPZ is IGL for his team, so he is really helping me. Now I think we are finding the way to work together, finding how to lead, who should co-lead, stuff like that. Not everything is on my shoulders.

How have the roles been in the team with the temporary switch?

The good part is SHiPZ is a really good player in general, you never expect it, calling-wise, entry fragging, lurking, all that stuff. The good thing is we can use him in the exact role that v1c7oR plays. As an entry fragger, as you can see, he is creating a lot of space for the team, and REDSTAR and h4rn are shining because of that. I think he is a really good replacement for v1c7oR.

Did the expectations for this team change because of the stand-in situation, do you feel it took the pressure off?

Not really, I know how SHiPZ plays and I know his skills. I knew if we could get out of the group stage, most likely we can go top-three. We had the same confidence because we know that SHiPZ is not less skilled than v1c7oR.

Can you win the whole thing?

It’s possible. My expectations are top-three in the tournament, so we will see how things are gonna go.

Looking forward to the rest of the year, what are the goals for the team?

The goal is staying in the top-20, and then aiming for top-10. We will see how things are gonna go, because who knows, maybe some changes can happen in our team or any others, who knows. As you can see the window is open right now, and a lot of changes are happening. But our main goal is staying in top-20 until the end of the year, and then working towards top-10.