syrsoN: "I don't give a f*** what people are saying about me; I know what I'm capable of"

After qualifying for the IEM Rio Major Legends Stage, Florian "⁠syrsoN⁠" Rische looks to the next stage with confidence, saying BIG have nothing to lose.

BIG became the third team to advance to the IEM Rio Major Legends Stage with a 2-0 victory over 9z, breezing past the South American squad on Nuke before battling through an overtime affair on Dust2.

The German side went 3-1 in the Challengers Stage and had a great performer in their AWPer, syrsoN, who averaged a 1.41 rating across five maps, currently sitting as one of the five highest-rated players of the Brazilian event. They now head into the second stage confident they can keep showing a good face.

"I think we should be really confident," syrsoN said in an interview with HLTV.org following BIG's qualification for the Legends Stage. "We have nothing to lose, I think we are the underdogs, still, facing good teams like FaZe and NAVI."

syrsoN also addressed his impressive individual level, taking the time to respond to the common criticism of the AWPer's disparity between his peak performances online and on LAN.

"I [don't] give a fuck what people are saying about me, like being an onliner and stuff, so I just focus on myself and I know what I'm capable of. Sometimes I have a bad tournament, sometimes I have a good tournament, but I want to be more consistent and show a good face of myself."

You can watch the full interview, in which the 26-year-old also talked about the difficult finish to the 9z series and his impressions of BIG's substitute, Elias "⁠s1n⁠" Stein, above, or read the transcript below:

syrsoN, congratulations on making it through to the Legends Stage. It was looking like it was going to be a breeze against 9z at the beginning, but then towards the end of Dust2 you struggled to close it out. Tell me about what happened.

Yeah, we had a bad start, but we came back, we fixed our mistakes during the game and then we just focused on ourselves. As CT, we thought we'd just close it out in seven rounds, but in the end they punished us, they punished our mistakes, they got a lot of first frags in mid and they hit people a lot through the doors, so we always started low HP on B. I also didn't do that many moves on CT, so at the end of the second half I started doing more moves again and tried to punish them, even in overtime. We were just focusing on ourselves as CT again and tried to win.

How do you reflect on the whole run through the first stage? Are you guys comfortable and happy with what you've shown?

Yeah, for sure. In my opinion, maybe we should have gone 3-0. We should have won the game against Bad News Eagles and maybe then the third game would be harder, but yeah, we showed a good face, we showed good results. We also showed a good face against BNE, maybe not on the T half, but on CT we had a really good game. I think everyone should be happy and we are also very happy.

What about your own individual form? I think you've been one of the highest-rated players of the first stage and you continued in this series again. What's been behind that?

Nothing, I just play my game. I [don't] (Editor's note: syrsoN misspoke in the interview) give a fuck what people are saying about me, like being an onliner and stuff, so I just focus on myself and I know what I'm capable of. I just try to show it day by day. Sometimes I have a bad tournament, sometimes I have a good tournament, but I want to be more consistent and show a good face of myself.

Tell me about confidence levels for the next stage. Obviously, a lot of the big teams are coming in, FaZe, NAVI, and we're still waiting for the end of the Challengers Stage. How confident are you that you can continue to show a good face there?

I think we should be really confident. We have nothing to lose, I think we are the underdogs, still, facing good teams like FaZe and NAVI we're still underdogs and we have nothing to lose. We can just play our own game and just try to punish their mistakes. Maybe they also have a disadvantage because they're coming in now, we already played like four games in front of the crowd and maybe they're a bit sloppy in the beginning. We'll see what we're doing.

You think that kind of experience will actually make a difference, especially considering the crowd that is here, which is fairly unique to this stage of the Major?

Yeah, in my opinion, I think so. Maybe on day one or day two we will have an advantage, but after day two, I think they should be prepared. After that, everything is like set and zero.

You have been playing with s1n for a month. What's your impression of him and how he's been fitting in in this weird situation that you have been put in?

I think he's a really good player. My impression of him is really high, he's doing really good, he's really good communication-wise, he has a good skill level because he played in academy like two or three months ago. His communication is good and he's also hitting his shots, so I think he deserves to be here. For sure, it's a bit sad for faveN that he cannot be here because of his sickness, but I think s1n deserved it, he's showing every day what he's capable of and he's a really good player.