isak: "Everyone is just so happy, we still can't believe it happened since we were so down"

The Swedish GamerLegion player talks about his team's turnaround in the first two stages of the Major.

GamerLegion have turned around a 0-2 start at the Challengers Stage to make it all the way to the Champions Stage with a 3-1 record in the second Swiss group stage at the BLAST.tv Paris Major. The European squad will now make a charge at the trophy when they take the stage at the Accor Arena in front of the Parisian crowd.

We caught up with Isak "⁠isak⁠" Fahlén in the Major's mixed zone after his GamerLegion secured a slot in the playoffs while knocking Apeks to the final Legends Stage match day, the 2-2 deciders. The Swede talks about his team's playoff chances with cautious optimism. "We've kind of joked around about it a little, let's just go and win the Major, that's our mentality right now," he told HLTV.

You made it through to the Major playoffs. There were a lot of emotions right after the victory over Apeks, a lot of the guys were even shedding tears. Tell me about those emotions after the game.

I think all of those emotions came from the fact that we were down 0-2 in the Challengers Stage and now we made it through the Legends Stage in a very nice way. Everyone is just so happy, we still can't believe it happened since we were so down. It's just indescribable.

How was that journey, going down 0-2 in the Challengers Stage and finding enough in the tank to make it to 3-1 in the Legends Stage.

It was a shaky first day, we basically had a talk after that saying that we need to step up in-game or otherwise we won't make it anywhere. After that we just took it one day at a time, we prepped the same every day, we did the work we needed to do and it paid off since now we're here.

You dodged some of the harder teams at this stage, what do you think you'll need in the Champions Stage if you're to face some of the favorites?

The most we need is to bring the confidence we brought to every game we won here. We're ready to play, we played most of the tier one teams on LAN since the last Major, we played Vitality there, so we know how it is to play them. The main factor will be the big crowd, not many of us, or any of us, have experienced it yet, so it's going to be a really fun experience. We're mainly just going to focus on our game, see what we can do and enjoy our time there.

As you say, it's a whole new level now in the arena with the crowd. What can you do to prepare mentally for a challenge like that?

We already had a little taste of it in Rio, there was very loud crowd there. I think we'll just have a talk with our sport psychologist to mentally prepare ourselves for the game. Then we'll just do our normal routine, not change anything up so there's no extra pressure, and just see how it works that day.

You did what had to be done so far, how high is your ceiling? How far can you go compared to the rest of the field in these playoffs?

We saw it at the last Major with Outsiders, they made it all the way through and won it. We've kind of joked around about it a little, let's just go and win the Major, that's our mentality right now. Obviously we need to take that one day at a time, as well, we'll see how it goes but that's the mindset we have.