apEX: "BLAST was cool, but we have to build on that; yesterday was the opposite"

A rather riled up Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire spoke to HLTV.org about Vitality's difficult road in the IEM Cologne Play-in stage.

Vitality entered IEM Cologne still quite fresh off a promising runners-up finish at the BLAST Premier Spring Final in Lisbon, their first deep run with the new lineup, but they have looked far from best form so far in Germany.

The French-Danish squad made it through to the group stage, but it was far from the formality that many might have expected from a team currently sitting in fifth place in the world rankings, as Vitality dropped to the lower bracket at the hands of Movistar Riders and had to battle through a difficult series against Sprout to advance.

After the match against Rasmus "⁠raalz⁠" Steensborg's team, still coming off of the adrenaline the always-animated apEX gave an interview to HLTV.org about Vitality's difficult road to the next stage:

Let's go back to the Movistar Riders loss. What happened? You struggled a lot against their CT sides on both maps.

On Vertigo they played really well and we didn't adapt enough. They were stacking on the right places and they just played really well. Overpass was just our fault, we did so many stupid things and we didn't have the flanks and all that kind of stuff, that just cost us easy rounds that we could have made.

I just think that that's what happens with Vitality, either we play a really good T side and everything is smooth, or it can be such a disaster. Yesterday was just a big disaster. Also, I think the mentality we had wasn't that good, and nowadays against any top teams, any team from the top 30, if you don't give your 100% you can lose, and that's what happened yesterday. We got destroyed.

Did you become complacent, or what do you mean by that?

Yeah, sometimes we just felt like some of us are really emotional and we maybe show it too much, and it affects the rest at some point, most likely in the moments where we struggle. That was the big talk we had yesterday, also, talking about 'guys, we need to rely on the team, we need to have a good attitude.' If we have a good attitude it can work really well. In BLAST, I don't think we played the best CS ever, obviously, but we had the mentality, so we could win those hard rounds and we could build on that. And yesterday was the exact opposite, not having the right attitude so you can lose any rounds as well.

Today we didn't play that good, but I just think we had the right mentality. I feel like they had the right plan on Vertigo, they were always on the right place, when we went A they were four there and that kind of stuff, but I don't think we played that bad in general, they just played better. And then on the other two maps, even though it was a sloppy CT side starts twice, we lost pistols as usual — actually we won two out of six, which is not bad, but on Dust2 we lost both pistols, so it's normal that it's a 16-11 map. That's not easy for us, but I know if we have the right attitude, I know that all the individuals can pop off and we can win some great rounds, but we will still lose some fucking shit rounds, it's us, Vitality.

But we need to build on something, and that's what I really want from this tournament. Once again, BLAST was cool in terms of the result, in terms of play as well, but we have to build on that, that's the minimum that we have to do, and yesterday was the opposite. We just went back to our "evil" and that was really sloppy. Let's see how it goes, I think today was much better even though it wasn't fantastic.

What's the vibe like at the moment, then? You mentioned how Lisbon was a big positive for the new Vitality, and now coming here you're struggling in the Play-in, and you're still yet to play the best teams that are at the tournament — your first opponent will be either one of the top-three teams or FURIA. What's the confidence like after the first couple of days here?

I think in general it's not the opponent that matters. I think a little bit in the sense that, I think that when you play lower teams sometimes we aren't playing our best, but when we play better teams I feel like we always make everything harder for them, always playing three maps, maybe we get wrecked on one but win one...

I think that, if we start showing up and play like in BLAST, we can do damage here, that's for sure. We can do a playoff run, that's what I want. I want to go back to the Cologne arena, I lost a few finals here — I don't expect to go to the final even though that would be fantastic, but I just want us to keep improving, that's what matters. If you see improvement from one event to another, then you can reach finals all the time and that kind of stuff, but we can not drop down as we did yesterday. That's not possible.

We might play one of the top three teams in the world, but we beat ENCE at the last tournament, FaZe are a bit less good right now than they used to. NAVI, we got wrecked in BLAST Lisbon, but they were super good, they played like crazy, and we played like garbage, to be honest. Whatever. I don't really care about opponents — I never care about opponents. I just want us to show a great face. And if we show a great face everyone can be scared of us, but it's way too rare right now.