Patsi on playing in "group of death": "We can do it"

Spirit's aggressive rifler believes his team can make it through their stacked group at IEM Katowice.

Spirit beat Sprout in the final match of the IEM Katowice Play-In to secure the last spot in the main event, defeating the Danish-Romanian combine 2-1 and successfully recovering from their loss to Ninjas in Pyjamas in the upper bracket. The Russian team arrived in Poland fresh off the tournament break and hadn't recorded an official since December, and so their form coming into the tournament was unknown.

They ended up qualifying for the main event in the end, but a flat showing against NIP leaves some questions regarding what their form will look like against upcoming, stiffer competition. HLTV spoke to Robert "⁠Patsi⁠" Isyanov after Spirit qualified to get some answers about the team's performance so far and what their expectations have been, as well as how they feel about being in the "group of death," which features G2, FaZe, Natus Vincere, Cloud9, and Liquid as competitors.

Can you tell me about how your IEM Katowice performance has compared to your expectations so far?

We wanted for sure the main stage, because for us we understand that it was a real goal for us. But after the games started, it's the start of the season, and we didn't know how we would play this season. The Grayhound match was not something like a challenge for us, but after, versus NIP we understood that we have some mental problems at the start of the season. We just fixed it with team talks and after this we understood that we got better, and we can make the playoff, in my opinion.

When we're playing praccs, it's very good for us, we're beating a lot of teams, like 20-10, and the only problem we have is mental on LAN. We're not stable, we have young players, like me as well, and we can't play stable all the time.

Is it nerves, or what is it exactly?

I don't think it's nerves, because first of all it's communication problems, in my opinion. We're young, we didn't play a lot of LANs before, we're playing first of all like a team. Other teams are playing with skilled players, with unreal communication. Now we're getting better at it and I'm sure we can get to the top level this year for sure.

What went wrong in the NIP game? You disappeared in the second halves, what happened?

I really don't know. They knew what we would do, but we don't know [what they would do], because they have two new players. We didn't expect what they can do, and because of it, it was so hard for us. Of course we are trying to do something in-game, but it was just unlucky, I don't know.

Yourself and w0nderful had an off match in that series and generally not playing up to the same level that we've seen you before. How are you feeling with your individual form at this tournament?

I think all our bad games are because of mentality, like I said before. w0nderful has really great form, all praccs he has 30+ [kills], so the only problem that he has is mental. That's it. He's working a lot in the past few months, he's watching demos, he aims like a god. It's only one problem that he has, that's it.

What I can say about me, I just need stability, that's it. Some games I have a very great performance, some games I have medium, and after, I have a low performance. It's bad for me and I'm working on that. I really want to be a top player.

I don't know if you saw how the groups are in terms of distribution of teams. A lot of people seem to think it's very lopsided, that Group A is much stronger. Where do you want to end up? I don't know if you know yet where you're going to play?

Someone said we're playing FaZe.

So you're in Group A. What do you think about it?

I was checking this group and it's really a group of death. I think we can do it. We can do everything. If we fix our problems, we can do it, for sure. We see on praccs that we have really great form, great individual form as well.