zont1x: "We believe Dust2 is a better map for us than Overpass"

The Ukrainian rifler expects his team to make the most of Dust2's addition to the map pool.

Spirit have returned to action at BetBoom Dacha Belgrade for the first time since their heartbreaking loss to FaZe at the Copenhagen Major. Due to their inactivity, the Russian squad has dropped to sixth in the world rankings, and Myroslav "⁠zont1x⁠" Plakhotia admits that some rustiness is present in their camp.

Spirit still made light work of Aurora in their opener, however, and won their first official on Dust2 after the map was reintroduced to the map pool in April.

After their victory, zont1x talked to HLTV about the map pool's newest addition, the reason for declining the EPL invite, and Spirit's expectations for the rest of the season.

If you can't see the embed above, listen to the audio interview here.

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You start the tournament with a win. That must feel good, right?

It's always great to start a tournament with a win, but we haven't played for more than a month, so it's a bit messy for now. But I think we'll play better with every game, so that's what I expect.

It was also your first Dust2 game since it came into the pool. How was the map from your perspective in your first official game?

It was a bit messy as well, because it's our first official game, but Dust2 is a very comfortable map for us. This map requires a lot of quality communication and understanding of rotations, how you can fake, and everything. This map is good for us.

We didn't like Overpass despite our stats on HLTV, and we believe Dust2 is a better map for us. So yeah, I think we'll play Dust2 better later, but for now, this is just how we play. It was a bit messy, but still, we won, and that's everything you need in the first game of the tournament.

You and donk come from a younger generation, so you didn't play Dust2 yet at a high level. Do you think that you two will need some time to get used to playing the map at a tier-one level?

There is no difference between maps. There are style differences between, for example, Overpass and Dust. They are very different maps, but there's nothing like that for a new map, you have to adapt to something new, it's almost the same as any other map.

It's very similar to Mirage, for example, if you talk about style and how teams play there. It's very logical, and there is nothing extraordinary on this map. So no, I don't think we'll need some time to adapt to Dust 2. It's just the same map as any other.

You haven't played an official match for six weeks now, so what did you do during this time?

We had almost two weeks off after we lost against FaZe at the Major. Then we had a lot of practice, we had bootcamp, and we were playing a lot. We just had two weeks off, and then we played a lot.

Did you focus a lot on Dust2 during this bootcamp?

Yeah, we started to play Dust2, if I remember, on the 3rd of May. It was our first practice on Dust2, we focused [on it] a lot. We were watching a lot of demos from CS:GO on Dust2, from some of the best teams at the time that played Dust 2, we spent a lot of time on the map.

You guys declined the invite to EPL. Did you want to use this time for practice rather than officials?

First of all, we received this invite very late. We were already chilling for 10 days. So if we accepted this invite, we would have to play without any preparation. That was not what we needed, to be honest. And secondly, we had visa issues. We had to get a visa, so there was almost no physical ability that we could play ESL Pro League, and that was why we didn't play there.

You have three tournaments left this season. BetBoom Dacha, IEM Dallas, and BLAST Spring Final. What do you guys want to achieve in these three tournaments?

We want to win all three tournaments, I think we have everything we need to win all of them. The maximum we can achieve is to win all three of them.