flameZ: "We took Katowice as a good slap in the face"

flameZ is happy that his team were able to take their disappointing run at IEM Katowice as a wake-up call.

Vitality were clearly the best team in the world last year, securing a litany of titles and the only Major on offer despite multiple roster changes. The additions of Shahar "⁠flameZ⁠" Shushan and William "⁠mezii⁠" Merriman didn't seem to slow them down at all.

The start of 2024 was, however, a different story as Vitality struggled to maintain their world-leading level, a last-place exit at IEM Katowice the culmination of their woes. The team bounced back at the Europe RMR, shaking off a loss against Cloud9 on their way to securing a spot at the PGL Major Copenhagen.

After brushing aside ENCE to book a place in Denmark, flameZ spoke with HLTV to give his thoughts on Vitality's RMR run, their recent positional changes, and who he sees as the biggest rivals for the Major trophy.

Date	Matches
PGL CS2 Major Copenhagen 2024 Europe RMR B
19/02/2024	Vitality Finished 13:2 GamerLegion	Match
19/02/2024	Vitality Finished 13:3 HEROIC	Match
20/02/2024	Vitality Finished 1:2 Cloud9	Match
21/02/2024	Vitality Finished 2:0 ENCE	Match

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Congratulations, how does it feel to secure your spot at the Copenhagen Major?

It feels amazing, to be honest. It wasn't really a close game, but it was tough in the game when we played it because we won the clutches and stuff like that. So ENCE played good, but not like in Katowice. In Katowice we faced a different opponent and I think also due to it being their home country they wanted to prove more. I'm proud of the team, for us it didn't matter if we qualified 2-3, whatever, like lose two matches, we don't care, we just wanted to qualify and we did it, so happy with the performance and that's it.

Did you have a little bit of a point to prove after IEM Katowice? Obviously that was a bit of a rough tournament for you.

Yeah, well mainly we just wanted to take revenge over HEROIC and ENCE, which we did this tournament and now we're good, we just need to take revenge back on Cloud9. The other games we still need to face, like FaZe, we haven't played them in a long while and they had more time with frozen, and Spirit, they're always like a big question mark but they might be the best as well. There are many enemies we haven't faced yet but so far we're happy, Katowice didn't go well but we took it as a good slap in the face to learn more and get our shit together.

I wanted to ask about that Cloud9 game actually. I think a lot of people would have had you as the favorites, what do you think went wrong in that series?

Well, I think they played good, I've got to give it to them, they didn't play bad. I think individually we were just a bit off on the last map, on Anubis I couldn't kill anybody on T side, so it helped a lot for them to win. I would just say they played really well, and we did some mistakes and we didn't capitalize on their mistakes as much as they did to us. They just played good, it's CS, anybody can beat anybody.

mezii talked a little bit about some positional changes for you guys, it seems like you and him have in particular done a few swaps. What has that been like for the team and what's that been like for you?

We figured out that Spinx and mezii are very good together, so once we put them together, they got things going very well, the communication everything is working very well. On Nuke specifically, I play ramp now and we just talked about it, I told mezii "yo, I want to try ramp and I think you'll be better on A."

Like on Anubis at the start, I played B and I was horrible, it was my worst side, I hated the map. Then I tried A after Magisk left, and I like it more when there is more space to move and I can do stuff instead of just sitting on B and doing nothing. The same on inner on Nuke, I felt like I couldn't do anything. So just mine and mezii's styles in game, we just fit it to each other, he can chill more and my ADHD goes when I sit and do nothing, so it's just just a matter of that.

Coming into the Major now, your team are the defending champions. Does that play on your mind at all?

Well, we have high expectations, but not because of that. I am not the reigning champion, and William is not the reigning champion, and XTQZZZ as well, so we come as a new team. Maybe the core of the roster, and Matt, the assistant coach, have that thing, they want to be the reigning champions. Of course everybody wants to win the Major, but I don't come thinking 'I need to defend this title,' I need to first acquire this title to talk about defending it.

Last question: who do you guys see as your big rivals for that Major title? Obviously you've mentioned a few teams there, Spirit with donk and maybe FaZe. Are there any teams in particular you're looking at like "we need to pay attention to these guys and make sure we know how they play?"

Well, I think every team nowadays. I think Astralis have been pretty promising in some sense, they play good I feel like and device is not having the time of his life and they are still playing solid. So when he figures out his things, I think they might be really insane as a team. HEROIC are doing good, you have obviously Spirit, FaZe, even G2, they did really well the last time I saw them. There is not really a specific rival, we just watch out for other teams because everybody is good now, you know, everybody is competitive, Cloud9, they beat us too.

There are many teams. We keep an eye on them obviously, but once we come and face them, we need to first see how it goes and how they play. I really believe in our preparations and when we come to officials we are different players, and I believe obviously we can beat anybody if we show a high level, but the competition is really high right now so we need to match it. donk with his crazy skills, FaZe, Spirit playing good as a team, so there are many aspects that you need to watch out for in any team and every team has different counters and stuff like that. But I'm fully prepared to play anyone.