ZywOo: "I feel I can play much better than that"

ZywOo doesn't think he's reached his peak quite yet.

Vitality wrapped up the year with a trophy lift at BLAST Premier World Final, ending 2023 on a high note and adding to a winning year that included title victories at IEM Rio, BLAST.tv Paris Major, Gamers8, and BLAST Fall Final.

The international composition were unstoppable in Abu Dhabi and didn't drop a single map in their run to the title, powered by a superlative performance from Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut as he secured his 18th career HLTV x 1xBet MVP award.

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ZywOo claims BLAST World Final MVP award

The Frenchman has quelled all doubts about his performance in CS2 by following up his BLAST Premier Fall Final MVP with an even more dominant show of force, mustering a tournament-high 1.41 rating and thrashing FaZe in the grand final.

He doesn't think he's reached his peak quite yet, however, and stressed to HLTV in an interview after the final that he still has room for improvement as Vitality look forward to 2024.

If you can't see the Soundcloud embed above, the audio version of the interview can be found here.

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2-0 victory to wrap up the tournament. Was it as easy as it looked?

Actually no. Maybe we didn't prepare that much, but we had a good mentality before joining this game. We wanted to finish on a high note, that's why everyone was winning this [...] on my team because they're happy for just joining this arena.

We are feeling really good, we knew what we were going to do during this game. apEX had a good game plan, for us we knew what to do each round, so the team was feeling really, really good and we came more prepared than at the Fall Final.

Both maps were fairly similar. You had an early lead, FaZe put together some rounds, and then you took control. Did you always feel like you were in control of the game?

I will say at the beginning of Nuke, it was a bit shaky because we were losing [2-5]. But after that, we knew if we played our game, if we believed in ourselves, if we just played together, we could come back, and now you see we did it.

On Inferno we had control the whole time, we played our game. karrigan was a bit crazy sometimes to cross some smokes, but even when he killed us we didn't tilt or anything, we just focused on what we could do for the next round.

You didn't lose a single map throughout the tournament, that was quite a way to end the season.

Actually, we are not really thinking about that, even before joining this game, this final. We didn't think about us not losing any maps, but obviously it's a good feeling. Not much to say because I'm not really thinking about it, it's going to be the same flavor if we are losing one map or not because we are winning this tournament anyway.

This was the second tournament with mezii, your second victory. Do you feel stronger now with mezii than you were back with Magisk, or do you think that you are in a bit of a honeymoon phase?

It's tough to say if we are better or not because it's another game, it's with a new coach, new player. It's weird because Magisk was really good with us as well, and mezii did really, really good this tournament this time. I will not say we're better now, but we're just at the same level.

You won IEM Rio, you won the Major, you won Gamers8, the Fall Final, and now the World Final. Are you happy with the year that the team had?

Yeah, we are really happy. That was our goal before joining this tournament, to finish on a high note and to win this trophy. Before joining this, we knew we will do great here, so we wanted to finish on a high note. Every game we were focused not 100%, but 150% because we wanted to have this trophy so much.

Vitality has always done a great job in terms of setting goals and working toward them, making sure that you peak at the right time. This year you won the Major for example, what kind of goals have you set for next year? Maybe win Cologne and Katowice, and the Major as well?

We haven't talked about next year yet because this season is just done now, so after the holidays or maybe a bit before, we're going to talk about our goals and what we want to achieve. For now, we're just going to rest, we are not thinking about the next season already.

This is your 18th MVP medal, you are now only three behind s1mple. I know you are going to say you don't think about or don't care about individual awards, but surpassing him would be quite an achievement.

Yes and no, because obviously like you say, I don't really care. I will be happy because I will have maybe 21, 22 MVPs, but it's not going to change my mind. I'm just going to play my game and just going to play with Vitality, so if I have 22 MVPs or zero, it's going to be the same for me.

Are we witnessing the peak of your powers, or do you think you still have some room for growth?

I still have room for improvement and I still make some mistakes. I need to work on it and I need to find a way to maybe play better or find a new peak, because it's a new game and you always find a new gap, new thing to do. I feel that I can play much better than that, yeah.