apEX: "A player like ZywOo has to play the Major, that's the minimum"

The Vitality captain sat down with HLTV for a quick chat after his team qualified for the BLAST.tv Paris Major.

Vitality came into the European RMR as one of the favorites, but no one expected them to have an easy road due to the stacked nature of the tournament. They traversed the best-of-one portion of the RMR with two close wins against Astralis and Ninjas in Pyjamas, giving themselves three chances to qualify.

They squandered their first chance against 9INE but showed a much better face against BIG, defeating the Germans 2-1 and securing themselves a Major spot.

After their victory, Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire talked to HLTV about the cut-throat nature of the RMRs, his happiness of making his home Major, and their packed schedule leading up to Paris.

You made it to the Paris Major. How important was it for you to make it there?

Well, of course it's important because it's in my country, but the thing is we're still far from playing in front of the French crowd. I'm just happy because I qualified for all Majors I could. I got banned from one and the other I was benched, so I couldn't do anything else. So all of the 17 Majors I could. I did everything in CS:GO, so it's just really good, it's a really good feeling for me.

The RMR is really terrifying for a lot of teams, cadiaN said something that if you really want it, you don't need to be scared. That's so fucking true, every team can beat any other team and we saw it yesterday, if we're not at 100 percent we can lose. Today was refreshing even though Mirage was tough, it means a lot for us, so it's good.

How sure were you after that Mirage that you would turn it around and get the 3-1 qualification?

I think we're on the good side but we couldn't hit shots. We lost a lot of duels, I feel like, as a B player I was like 'Ah, it's pretty tough.' But then we started again at the end of the map and I could see that the team was awake, after all. It was their map pick, we played our map pick, we destroyed them as well, and Overpass has been a bit shaky for us, especially our T side, the CT side is really good, but the T side has been shaky for quite some time and that was a big focus for us. You can't come with a bad side like this one. We didn't have much time to show it, but I think it's getting better and that's why we won today.

We touched on the French part of the Major, but it's also the last one on CS:GO. A guy with such a legacy as you, you've been here during the whole life of the game, you have plenty of achievements. Does it mean anything to have made it knowing that it'll be the last one in this version of the game?

Well, I think I had a good career in CS:GO, overall. I won't lie, I think I've done a lot for the game and the game did a lot for me, as well. I've been changing roles up and down, left and right, I've been doing this for my whole life, and it just means a lot as in-game leader to now be able to qualify for Majors again. It's a first step, it took five minutes for me to be happy and now I'm already at the Major itself. We have a few qualifying games for the Legends Stage spots, and we need to focus on that.

We can't be like yesterday, because yesterday was a really shit day. I think they [9INE] played good, but overall we played really bad and our mental was really shit. It was a really shit game to play, to be honest. I needed my guys to wake up today and I hope people understood why we were good today to do the same tomorrow and not tilt. Playing CS, playing with our habits, rushing when we have to rush, and then we can have both really good CT an T sides.

Yesterday was a rough day, but we've also seen it happen to a lot of the bigger teams playing against these less established teams that are coming here really hungry, saying they're going to upset, going to make it. What was it?

I think that they play good, and they really want it. I saw mynio on the screen after, when I rewatched the game, and he was shaking because it meant a lot for him. I told my guys before the RMR that it's not the best team that qualifies, it's the team that wants it the most. And for them, playing a Major is fantastic. Imagine for the Polish scene, it's been five or six years that they didn't have a Polish team, so every game we play I say 'Guys, if we want it more than them, we will win.' But yesterday, for real, we didn't want it more. That was pretty tough, overall, but we had a wake up call.

We cannot change the past, we can only change the future, and I hope it'll be a good reminder for the next game. Even though the first day was a close game, we wanted it. Look at Heroic, they were down 14-10 against Aurora, they could have lost the game, but they won. That's exactly that, being ready for everything. They went 3-0, they deserve it, and it's all about that. It's a reminder, every time, 'Guys, think about 9INE.' I will tell them, 'Look at what we did with 9INE. Do we want that, or do we want to do better?'

You still do have a couple of games for that Legends Stage spot, but you've cleared the toughest spot, you'll be at the Major. There will be a bit of a celebration at some point, I'm sure...

No!

No?

No, no, no. I mean. Let's be honest, a team like us, a player like ZywOo, he has to play the Major. That's the minimum. He's the best player in the world right now without a doubt. He's so good, no way he doesn't play a Major, so for us it's just like... Whooh. But no, no time to celebrate. We have the last games and then IEM Rio next week. For me, it's all-in until the Major and then we'll be able to get some rest. For now, I just want my team to improve again.

This year has been tough because we lost two quarter-finals that we should have won, in EPL and in Katowice. Everyone thinks we're bad, but it's so tough because we had to win those two games and we would have made at least two semi-finals. People would have said, 'Ah, okay, two semi-finals minimum,' and we don't know what would have happened after. It's the first time in my whole career that I say that we should have won those games. So we keep working and we don't want this to happen.