YEKINDAR: "We do feel like favorites, but we can't forget that all the teams here are strong"

Members of Virtus.pro spoke to the press at a conference ahead of IEM Winter playoffs.

At a tournament missing the world's best team, featuring squads with stand-ins, new rosters, or ones soon to be changed, Virtus.pro displayed their famed consistency and reached the semis where they will play Vitality on Saturday at 16:00 .

In their second tournament since replacing Sanjar "⁠SANJI⁠" Kuliev with Evgenii "⁠FL1T⁠" Lebedev, Virtus.pro have defeated ENCE, GODSENT, and Gambit, with the CIS matchup being the topic of the first question asked by journalists at the press conference.

"The addition of FL1T refreshed us and we are not looking at our previous results, we approach this team as something new for us," Dzhami "⁠Jame⁠" Ali explained, saying that the game against Gambit was approached like any other match at the event.

Replacing the ultimate support SANJI for FORZE's standout player was never going to be a straightforward process, which is evident by players having new positions on some maps compared to their first outing at the PGL Major, notably on Mirage.

"We have an incredibly strong roster and every player can take any role on a map like Mirage, so I think that the current lineup arrangement is not yet fully set in stone," in-game leader Jame when asked about the roles. "In general, a map like Mirage has been played 1000 times, there is nothing problematic in making some swaps. I think that for one game everyone can switch."

Moving past just positions, how the style of the team would develop with a firepower upgrade such as FL1T was a curious topic. In his guest appearance on HLTV Confirmed during the PGL Major, Mareks "⁠YEKINDAR⁠" Gaļinskis spoke about a team's style being tailored to the pieces available, and Virtus.pro seemed faster and more aggressive during IEM Winter. Jame doesn't think that a style change has necessarily happened.

"Maybe on the screen it looks like it's a faster playstyle, but we just started to find entries and exchanges, which helps us to take zones. Previously we could not find such entries, we would be finding full teams. But now, due to us improving our firepower, we win duels more often and by that take map control and are not afraid to take risks."

Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire's comment about Jame "saving more often than he gets an opening kill" was presented to the AWPer during the press conference, but the Russian remained cold-headed as he is on the server in his response. "I'm not sure if he actually counted all of these moments for his facts. I believe that he was just trying to make a toss in my direction."

Virtus.pro are known for having long, drawn-out matches, but often prevailing in those difficult, overtime affairs. At IEM Winter, four out of five of their maps went 30 or more rounds, but in the end they reached the semis without dropping a single one.

Explaining their close games at the event, YEKINDAR spoke about the experience they are still gaining with FL1T leading to some matches being closer than expected. "But in general, we have many close matches because", he breathes in deeply before continuing "...we are saving."

The whole team started laughing as the Latvian gave the response, taking a pause before explaining in detail why the team most famous for saving also plays the longest games.

"I think it makes sense. We value our lives and our weapons more than other teams. When teams lose 7:16, it means that they went for 2v3 retakes and by losing that kind of round they also lost the economic war. Maybe it went the other way around, so they won the 2v3 and won 16:7. We prefer to play more carefully. "

Out of the remaining four teams, Virtus.pro seem to be the one with the least problems at the moment. Are they favorites for the title? YEKINDAR thinks they are.

"We do feel like favorites, but we can't forget that all the teams here are strong even though they have different stand-in problems, language barriers, new player problems, and then Vitality — I think they might even be feeling a bit better because they know it is their last tournament, they are giving it all. We feel that we are capable of winning this tournament, we are not afraid of any team, and overall we just believe that if we are not cautious we can lose to any of these teams too. We are just going to be focused and it doesn't matter what problem they have on their side."

Anastasija "Heccu" Tolmacheva contributed to this article.