apEX: "I will have some duels against donk; I'll have to play smart, or more crazy"

The French captain discussed working on his individual form in recent weeks.

Vitality have had a shaky campaign in IEM Dallas, dodging an early entry into the lower bracket after overcoming Monte in a close opening BO1. After a confident win over G2, a loss to 9z in a playoff seeding match raised questions about the European side's form.

Now in playoffs, Vitality kicked things off with a solid start, notching a quick 2-0 victory over HEROIC in the latter side's first playoff outing since piecing together an international lineup.

Shortly after his team's victory over HEROIC, Vitality captain Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire spoke to HLTV regarding the quarterfinal series, the team's hiccups in Dallas and Malta, and his thoughts on their upcoming series versus Spirit.

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Congratulations on the game, it was a pretty straightforward win. How are you feeling about securing a place in the semi-finals?

That was really important for us after the 9z loss, to step up. We had a big talk yesterday about, most likely our issue is that we enter really late into games. Today we wanted to get straight into the game. It happened, we played well, 2-0, convincing, happy.

You've been pretty vocal about the team having issues in the past despite your solid results. After losing to MOUZ at EPL you talked about how the team didn't play particularly well. For the game against 9z was it a lot of the same issues that you had against MOUZ?

I think at least against 9z we put up a fight on the second map, even though we started late, once again. Back in Malta that was a lot different, MOUZ was really really off. Two days ago against 9z, we were off, but some part of the game against MOUZ, that was a war game, so that was a bit different.

As far as the HEROIC game goes, you played phenomenally on the first map. Anything special there, or just a good stroke of luck?

(laughs) Well, I think lately I'm putting more hours into my game. I think since I am IGL it was hard for me to focus on the aim duel too much, because I felt it wasn't paying off, was not playing way better. I stopped for a bit of time, and I felt I wasn't playing bad at all.

The last two or three weeks I had the joy to play CS more. I did more FACEIT, I did more deathmatch, playing with my friends, and I think it paid off, so I think it's a mix of everything, of course. A bit of luck, and also I hit crazy shots most of the time, and that felt good.

On the second map you picked Dust2, which obviously didn't go your way against 9z. Were you hoping to build back some confidence on the map versus HEROIC?

Once again, against 9z we just didn't play well. It's not about the map. People need to understand that sometimes when we are off we can play any map, it wouldn't work. That's what happened against 9z; they picked Dust2, we were pretty happy about that, but we didn't show up. We knew today that we need to have a good Dust2, because we are a good Dust2 team, I know we will be. We're working a lot, we worked a lot on the map already, so for me, it was focusing on that. It happened well, and we played well, so good for that.

You guys have a highly-anticipated matchup against Spirit in the semis. How are you feeling ahead of playing donk for the first time?

This will be the first time we play them. This guy is a phenomenal prodigy. Actually, the fun part tomorrow, if we play some maps, I will have some duels against him, which, not gonna be easy for me. I will have to play a bit smart, or just try to play more crazy, we'll see what type we do.

They're a good team, donk is, as I said, phenomenal, but for us we know if we focus on ourself we can win, and that's what matters for us. We had two okay events last two events, semi-final and final. We are still in the semi-final, which is not bad, but we are here to get trophies. Really looking forward to playing against them, and hopefully I get a trophy afterward.