siuhy: "In a way, we like to play against teams with a superstar"

MOUZ overcame ZywOo and donk in the span of seven days.

MOUZ became the in-form team of the Counter-Strike circuit in just over a week, as they claimed two LAN titles at ESL Pro League S19 and BetBoom Dacha Belgrade. The young team is showing no signs of stopping, however, as they are set to compete at IEM Dallas, starting on May 27, where they will aim to continue their form.

Their wins are made even more impressive due to the fact that the Kamil "⁠siuhy⁠" Szkaradek-led team took down two titans, Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut and Danil "⁠donk⁠" Kryshkovets, with both superstars coming into the grand final in imperious form before admitting defeat to MOUZ.

After their latest triumph, siuhy sat down with HLTV to discuss their win against Spirit, their recipe for playing against the best players in the world, and MOUZ's expectations for the rest of the season.

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I'll start with the boring question. You won 3-0 against Spirit. How do you feel right now?

Feels good, especially after we've been on the road for a long time now, it's just a really good reward at the end of the season, so we feel really good as a team. This is something we've been working hard for, and now we are receiving that success, so it means a lot.

To talk more about this series specifically. You guys chose Vertigo, which has been a struggle map for Spirit. Did you still feel you have some gaps to exploit even after they changed some positions?

I told the team, and we realized together before the game a few days ago, that all those statistics don't show that Vertigo is good for us. Maybe the statistics show that the map is a little bit off for us because we lost some games on it and we didn't really play the best, but internally, we feel really good and strong on it, so it was a no-brainer to pick it.

Although they changed some spots, we still felt really confident coming into the game. One spot or change is not going to change how they play completely, so we were just playing our own game. We showed up and we won.

On Ancient, it felt like you guys won a clutch or a 2vsX situation pretty much every round in the early exchanges. How was it to play inside the server because outside it seemed pretty chaotic?

Yeah, it was very stressful on Ancient, even though we were winning 9-1 at some point. I was repeating to the guys that these rounds were very close and that it could easily get out of our hands, so we just needed to stay on our toes and play sharp until the end.

We lost a few rounds towards the end, and it got out of control, but we also knew that coming into the second map, they would want to win a lot more and come back into the game. We expected a good fight from them, and that's what they did, but we still came out on top.

Then the final map, Mirage, looked pretty straightforward. Did you feel like you won the mental battle at that point in the series?

We didn't feel we won the mental battle because we knew these guys also lost the first two maps in the final last season [at BetBoom Dacha], and they came back. We knew that they still had it in them to come back, so we just made it clear to ourselves that it wasn't over yet and we just needed to continue playing until we could stand up from our PCs.

We felt really comfortable on Mirage and we played our own game again. It's one of our strongest maps right now. With the form that we are in, we could beat any team in the world.

You guys are one of only two teams that beat Spirit on LAN this year, and you guys did it twice. Do you have a special recipe against them, or what is the deal with that?

I think we just don't overcomplicate it. We are a very strong team, and in a way, we like to play against teams that have this superstar. We played Vitality in a best-of-five not long ago, and it was a very similar type of feeling when you come into the game and you're playing ZywOo.

It was the same feeling here coming into the game. People are asking about donk, donk is going to do this, donk is going to do that, but for us, it was more about how we play as a team and how we come into the game. It didn't matter who we were playing against, it just mattered that we came prepared and showed up for the game day.

Considering you flew directly here from Malta, how exhausted are you right now?

During the last few days, we had a sit-down as a team, and we talked about the fact that we are getting tired. Maybe we're not at a hundred percent right now, but we knew that we need to stay motivated and grind these days out. Winning this tournament and having a few days off is going to be a great reward for us, and it's going to mean a lot coming into Dallas.

We are in such good form, and we're coming from two tournament wins in a row, so it's going to mean a lot for the next tournament for us, and that's why we just kept pushing and pushing. We did the best we could to close it out today.

Talking about Dallas. You guys won two in a row now, are you aiming for three in a row? Especially considering the event is played in an arena?

For sure. This end of the season is a goal for us, we want to basically win what we weren't able to win at the start of the season. Coming to the end of the season, we have put in a lot of work for these tournaments to have success in them, so we are definitely aiming for the championship again in Dallas.

The way we do that is we just have to come in rolling from these two tournaments with the form and the routines we have. How we are doing things and the structure in the team are really good right now, and we're feeling good on and outside the server. We just need to continue that in Dallas.