xertioN on facing Vitality: "A good match to test our level"

The Israeli opener isn't worried that his team has looked a bit off the pace at times in Cologne.

MOUZ have punched their ticket to the playoff stage of IEM Cologne 2024 after beating Complexity 2-0 in Group B's upper semi-finals. It marks the team's return to the LANXESS arena after they missed out on a playoff spot last year.

The EPL 19 champions are now set to face Vitality in a seeding match, with the winner skipping the first round of the playoffs and going straight to the semi-finals.

After the match against Complexity, Dorian "⁠xertioN⁠" Berman sat down with HLTV and discussed the team's slow starts in Cologne, the preparation for the event, and his playoff expectations.

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A 2-0 victory against Complexity and you're through to the LANXESS for the first time in your career. With MOUZ being a German organization, how important was it for the team to make it into the playoffs?

Very, especially after last year's failure. I think everyone on the team felt really bad, for us but also for the organization, because they've done everything to give us a good system and a new facility that we can now practice in. They're doing all the right things, so I'm just happy to pay back a bit.

Talking a little bit about the series, Vertigo was looking a little bit shaky at first. They had that 5-0 start, but then, you got into your stride and you took control of the game, pretty much.

Sometimes, we have some slow starts as a team. It happens quite frequently and it's something we're working on. Against Falcons, it was better. A bit of an off-start, I would say, but once we got into our groove, we showed that we are a better team than them, and I think that everyone played really well today.

Nuke was a very close game, but you pulled through in the end. Did you expect such a tight game?

Yeah, of course. Complexity are always tough to play against, they're really good. I'm a big fan of EliGE, I think he's a great player. Today, it was kind of tough for me, I felt a little bit out of it. I'm just happy that my team pulled through and happy to win, even though I didn't play my best.

Are you worried that some of the games that you have played here haven't been very clean?

No, I think that everyone is having some scrappy games at the top level. I think there is no best team in the world at this moment. Obviously, we want to be so in the future, but there is a lot of work ahead of us for us to achieve it. We're going to take it step by step. Bad game or whatever, we've still won two games. There are even teams like Spirit that are already out, which is incredibly surprising. Just take it step by step and move forward.

Most of the teams here came straight from the BLAST Fall Groups, but that was not your case. You had, like, three weeks to prepare for this tournament. What did you work on? And are you happy that you had all that extra time to prepare for this event?

What we worked on is a bit of a secret, but I think we put in really good work coming into here. We also had a really good bootcamp, we had some good talks with each other, some team bonding with our sports psychologist. In general, I think it's just nice to have the bootcamp facility of MOUZ now because it kind of feels like a second home at this point already. I think we did all the right things, and I just hope to keep showing it, we have a seeding game, and after that in the LANXESS arena.

Yesterday against Falcons, you had a very strong start to the series with a very one-sided new game, and torzsi had that team kill towards the end. But the series ended up being a very close one. Do you think that maybe you underestimated them a little bit after that easy first game?

Not too much. Mentally, I think it's always difficult to reset to the mindset of that they're a really good team because we won the first map very convincingly. But we knew they're a really scrappy team and that they can always bring back rounds. They have a lot of experienced players. It happened, but I think overall we were just prepared to win.

Heading into this event, most people would put Spirit, G2 and NAVI as the favorites. Spirit are already out. What do you think about your chances in the playoffs? Because there's always that question of whether you guys can do it on the big stage.

I think everyone has the same chance. Whoever deserves it more and puts in the better work will win the tournament. I'm not really thinking about it in this moment. I just want to take it step by step and show up as a team every single game. It doesn't matter if it's in a quarter-final or semi-final. Hopefully, we make it as far as we can. Overall, I'm just looking forward to playing there.

Date	Matches
IEM Cologne 2024
13/08/2024	MOUZ 18:55 Vitality	Match

You're now going to play the winner of FaZe vs Vitality. What are your expectations for this seeding match?

I think it's in the third map now, it's like 8-8 or something. It's always a brawl between these two teams. I'm not sure what to expect. We will gladly take on either team. I think it's going to be a good match to test our level at this point. They are two very good teams. Looking forward to facing whoever.