magixx on qualifying for the Rio Major: "The best thing I am enjoying is the work I've done with the guys"

Boris "⁠magixx⁠" Vorobiev sat down with us for a quick chat after Spirit qualified for the IEM Rio Major with a 2-0 win over Bad News Eagles.

Spirit will return to play at another Major after qualifying for IEM Rio, making it through the Europe RMR with a 3-1 record following wins over 1win, GamerLegion, and Bad News Eagles.

The Russian team had been the underdog heroes of PGL Major Antwerp, starting their run in the Challengers Stage and making it all the way to the semi-finals, where they fell to the eventual champions FaZe in a thrilling two-map series.

Now, they have ensured themselves a chance to surprise teams again, this time with 17-year-old Ihor "⁠w0nderful⁠" Zhdanov in tow. HLTV.org caught up with magixx after Spirit made it through to get his thoughts on the young AWPer's progress, as well as how it feels to book a spot at the Major and how he feels about their prospects heading into it.

You can watch the full video with him above, and check out more content from the Europe RMR on our YouTube channel here.

Congratulations, you re-qualified for the Major. First of all, just tell me how you're feeling after that win?

It's a great feeling being qualified for the Major. It is the second time with the new roster of Spirit, which we made in the beginning of the year. The best thing I am enjoying is the work I've done with the guys, we all worked to make it real, to make it happen, so it's insane feeling.

Like an example, in the previous roster back then when I was picked up into Spirit, I was only 16 and I was too young, too inexperienced, too not that skilled. Now some of the games... at some point there is this thing, like I was not the one who makes the big impact, makes the victory, and nowadays I can feel that I have done a great job, I can see the result and it's great.

You also added the 17-year-old w0nderful, do you feel like you're helping him get that experience you didn't have back then?

Yeah, we are all working really hard to make him better. We are consistently working on everyone, we are talking things through, we are trying new stuff and we are giving him chance to make a mistake so he will grow up. If you are not making mistakes you won't grow, but he has room to make his plays, to play whatever he wants, whatever he feels because he is an AWPer and it's important for him to do whatever he wants to and we are helping him with all we can.

Do you feel like coming into this tournament, that teams prepared for you more because you were both previously at the Major but also with recently playing in Cologne and EPL?

So, talking about teams being preparing for us, I would say... not really. Like if you are playing against a team who are really doing some anti-stratting against you, you can really feel this, but there are not so many teams that are doing heavy anti-stratting. More of the players are relying on their own place, their own positions, strats, etc., and they believe it's going to work because it works for them in practice and in other tournaments, so sometimes anti-stratting is bad.

Now going into the Major, I know degster when he left the team, one of the things he talked about was wanting to win a Major, he's done being an underdog in that sense. How do you feel now that you're going into another Major with that in mind?

I don't have anything in my mind yet, it's just great to make it to the Major, it's just great to come to Brazil because Brazilian fans of Counter-Strike are great. It's a big audience and it will be a great experience once again. I'm not setting any goals like win a Major, I just play the game and you will get what you worked for.

When you went into the last Major it was this underdog story where you made the semi-finals, and it was a really big moment on stage as well. Now heading in this time around, where do you feel you're positioned as a team given some of the recent tournament results like at EPL as well?

Honestly, we have bad results at Cologne, insanely bad results. The EPL we had an early exit, we didn't make it through the groups which was a disappointment. Going into here we skipped some of the online tournaments to prepare for it, and I hope that we are going to continue getting better for the Major which is coming. We have maybe some more tournaments before the Major, and I hope that we are going to grow, grow, grow until the Major and we will peak on Major.

You have this FiReLEAGUE tournament coming up, with w0nderful are you trying to get as much LAN experience as you can before you get into the Major?

Yes, at some point it is about experience, but actually it is just a tournament where we can play, we can try some stuff, just play the game to get used to LAN environment which will be good really for w0nderful as you said. We just have time to play this tournament, and it's good to attend it.