chopper: "We're a super young roster that is only approaching its strongest form"

Spirit's in-game leader is level-headed about his team's results and doesn't get carried away by narratives.

Spirit made a statement early in the season with a victory at IEM Katowice and, although they haven't managed to lift more silverware since, the Russian squad made it to the playoffs at all of the events they attended.

The most result-oriented people could say that Spirit peaked, unable to replicate their IEM Katowice run. The believers will argue that they have not yet peaked, and the best is yet to come. For Leonid "⁠chopper⁠" Vishnyakov, they are a young team still figuring things out — victory and defeat are both part of the journey.

So where does that leave the team at the BLAST Premier Spring Final, their last event of the season? "We’ve come to show what we’ve changed after Dallas, and to just show a good game," chopper says. "We will try to beat everyone, but I don’t think we’ll be upset if some things go wrong."

This interview was conducted in Russian and later translated by Russian-speaking HLTV staff.

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How do you feel about Spirit’s season? Obviously, you won Katowice at the start and still had some good finishes since, but you have not won any more tournaments.

I think it’s a good season for our team because it’s the first time we've won something big. We also reached the playoffs at every event we played. Since we’re a very young team, the win at our first event puts high expectations on us — it's a high bar. But the results we're achieving so far are very good.

You started with a very good performance at Katowice, and the results were not so good after. Do you think teams learned how to play against you, or do you think it’s more of everything going right at Katowice?

Many teams didn’t know how to play against us, but with time, they learned how to execute anti-strats against us and understand us in general. But I also think we overperformed in Katowice.

We were all charged up and in the flow, and from that point, we started encountering problems outside of the game, regardless of the opponents. Now, we're in the period when we gain experience from each event and learn from each loss and each win.

The teams that are beating you right now are only the top five teams. Why do you think you’re losing these games?

We lose to different teams for different reasons. For example, we lost to FaZe because, firstly, they played a great game that match, and we were not cold-blooded enough. It was an arena, and we were too excited for the game and made mistakes. If we were more cold-blooded, we could have won. But in that match, specifically, FaZe played incredibly, and they did more to win over us.

Then, it was against MOUZ. For us, it was a warm-up tournament, and we were trying to improve our form. I think both times MOUZ beat us, it was because they played well, while we couldn’t get into the game and maybe didn’t approach the matches the right way. There were different reasons for losing against them, but I believe each of those losses gave us a lot of experience.

The last loss was against Vitality. I think each of us played poorly at some point in that game. They outplayed us individually, and we couldn’t get into the game. I don’t have much to say about Dust2, where we made many mistakes, but Mirage was very close, and we just couldn’t get into the game individually.

magixx recently said that it was mostly due to mental reasons. Do you agree with that? Is is something you’re trying to improve in this team?

I don’t quite agree with that. You can say that you lose games because of some mental issues, but we’re professionals and play a lot, and you can’t just say you lost due to some mental problems. It’s your game and the way you play that decides everything.

Every match we lost was because our opponents did things better than us at that moment and, if we can’t do better than our opponents, then it means that they outplayed us. Yes, there are situations like someone getting sick, but it’s just a game, and it’s all decided on the server.

If mental issues arise, it could be that your opponents push you into them. When you lose, it’s due to a large combination of factors — not only mental issues, but also opponents pushing you to make mistakes and ultimately outplaying you on the server.

There were rumors going around that Perfecto might be joining the team for zont1x. Is there any truth to that? Would you guys even think about changing the team, considering how good you are?

They're just rumors. I don't know where they're coming from. We don't think about that in the team because we're a super young roster that is only approaching its strongest form.

I don't think anything needs to be changed here. We're doing well, and no one on the team is thinking about that. When we see things like that, we just laugh about them and consider them a joke.

Do you think you're in good shape for this tournament? Can you win it? Is that the expectation?

I don’t think we have any expectations from this event. We’ve come to show what we’ve changed after Dallas, and to just show a good game. I think our group is very interesting, with a lot of good teams.

We will try to beat everyone, but I don’t think we’ll be upset if some things go wrong. It’s just a part of the deal. If you want to be winning, losses are going to happen as well.