mezii: "I feel like I've found my place within the team"

Despite failing to win a trophy this season with Vitality, mezii was able to see the positives.

Vitality end the first six months of 2024 without a trophy to their name, a far cry from the heights of their Paris Major victory and five trophies in 2023.

The team's star rifling duo of Lotan "⁠Spinx⁠" Giladi and Shahar "⁠flameZ⁠" Shushan struggled to consistently rise up around Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut and provide the supporting cast needed to close out big games, and the French superstar had deflated performances himself in the two grand finals Vitality played at ESL Pro League Season 19 and IEM Dallas.

William "⁠mezii⁠" Merriman also was criticized as he struggled to slot into his roles and his individual level dipped immensely until he had a return to form in Dallas. He put up solid numbers in the group stage of BLAST Premier Spring Final and locked in an arena appearance in front of his home crowd, but faltered in a win over FaZe and was subpar at best in the semi-finals as Spirit saw to Vitality's elimination.

Speaking to HLTV after the loss, mezii spoke about Spirit outcalling Vitality on the T side, the feeling of playing in front of his home crowd, his growing comfort slotting into new roles, and how he looks back on Vitality's trophy-less season.

If you cannot see the SoundCloud embed above, you can listen to the full interview here.

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Tough loss, how are you feeling?

It's disappointing. We didn't play our A game today, but I definitely think we had chances, we messed up a lot of rounds on both of the maps. It's sad to go out this way, but I am also just happy I got to experience this crowd, it's something I've been looking forward to. Sad, but happy I got to experience it as well.

What was the crowd like? There were a lot of chants of your name, when you were outside in between maps people were screaming at you, what did it feel like?

It's definitely something new, I never usually get this much support, it's just crazy, completely different to any other tournament. Like I say, it's sad we went out this way, but it's crazy to get this much support and I just want to say thank you to everyone for giving this support.

Just to talk about the match, it felt like Spirit were faking you out a lot on their T side. You were going to the wrong bombsites a lot, did it feel like that in the game?

Yeah, especially on Anubis, a couple of times they faked us out well. It's one of those maps that favors the T side in that regard, they can move between sites pretty fast between Mid and B, so it's definitely unfortunate, but I think as well we would be annoyed with ourselves if we didn't move around too much, if we played too static and too scared.

It's one of those things where it didn't work out for us today when we were trying to play a bit more proactive, and trying to find the right bombsite. Today it just didn't work out.

There were a lot of saves from you in this game. I know Vitality are not afraid of a save anyway, but today there were a lot.

It's something we spoke about. There have been a few games this season, and even this tournament, where we've gone a bit too far and gone for rounds we should never be going for. When we have a big lead as well, where it kind of matters, we lose out on rounds and the economy gets messed up.

We had a talk saying we needed to be better at saving, and sometimes hunting a bit too much, so today we tried to take it back a little bit.

Just to look at Vitality's season as a whole: is it a disappointment to not win a trophy?

It's hard to say. Of course Vitality and us as a team, we are always looking to win, especially off the back of when I first joined the team and having instant success. The main thing is that after Katowice we made progress throughout all our tournaments and made deep runs, making back-to-back finals and here obviously a semi-final.

It's one of those things: it's hard to say it's a disappointment, but at the same time, as a competitor and a player, you always want to win. Especially when we know we are so close to winning. It's unfortunate, but I wouldn't say it's a disappointment overall.

It feels like you personally have hit a nice vein of form towards the end of the season; at EPL and Dallas you had some really great series, really great games. Are you just getting more comfortable in Vitality?

Yeah definitely. I feel I am knowing my position in the team, knowing what I can give to the team and playing much more confidently.

Of course it's taken a bit more time than I would have hoped, I would liked to have hit the ground running as an individual, but its one of those things where I had some new roles and I needed to get comfortable with playing with so many superstars within the team as well, it's different for me. I definitely feel like I've found my place within the team.