sjuush: "We can be proud of this result even though it f**king hurts"

The team walks away with heads held high after beating G2, Vitality, and pushing NAVI the distance in Rio.

HEROIC have been sent packing from IEM Rio in the semi-final stage following a 2-1 loss to Natus Vincere in a closely contested series. Damjan "⁠kyxsan⁠" Stoilkovski's troops were in control on Ancient and in the first half of Dust2, but then NAVI produced a sensational comeback before cruising through Mirage.

It is a bitter loss, but Rasmus "⁠sjuush⁠" Beck preferred to look at the positives from his team's deep run in Rio. "We beat Vitaltiy, we beat G2, and then we played up against NAVI, who've been in five finals in a row, now six," he told HLTV after the match. "We can be proud of it even though it fucking hurts and we could have won."

HEROIC will have little time to lick their wounds as they are slated to compete at Elisa Masters Espoo in just a few days. sjuush admitted that the tournament schedule has been grueling, even for a team like his, which doesn't have many deep runs to its name. "It can be pretty rough and it's going to look rougher next year," he said. "But... (laughs) hopefully, we'll figure something out."

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

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sjuush, commiserations on the loss. It was a hard one, can you tell me about your feelings after that?

It started out really well, but then on Dust2 we had a good half where we were ping-ponging with each other. But as soon as they started winning rounds and things got a little hard for us, we lost that little spark between us where like, one guy gets contact, hides, waits for the next guy's contact. It was more like we just die, instantly, we just give them openings and now everything is open, then we have to do a push and it doesn't work.

On Mirage, it kind of felt the same in a way, but also the firepower on the last map, at least for myself, I was in good positions mostly but I just lost every single duel where it was one-on-one. If I got that one kill, maybe it would have looked different and we would have won the round, but it's just hard if you don't win those.

It was a hard series for you, the end of Dust2 especially. Coming into Mirage, can you tell me about trying to reset from that, your mentality after that?

I don't really care about previous maps because I can't change anything anyway, so I go in with full fire, full focus, and believing in it still. But Dust2 was hard because I played retake, or I pushed and didn't see anyone, or they went to my site and I was just stranded, like pretty shit. Mentally I wasn't really that worried, I didn't feel like I had a bad game, I was just in shit positions mostly.

Did you expect the fans to be on your side? I know degster did his little speech and from then it seemed like they were behind you the whole time.

Yeah, I heard after jL talked, they were fully on their side, but degster had prepared a little sentence in Portuguese and after that everyone just loved us. It was an amazing feeling actually, I didn't expect it.

NertZ had a rough travel day coming here, it was 70 hours or something, but after that how has the whole event been for you in terms of the results you got? It's still a semi-final finish, your results are steadily improving as a team, can you tell me about that?

Yeah, the travel time we had was definitely hard. Not only NertZ, I think it was pretty hard for degster and kyxsan as well. Coming in with that, it was kind of rough, but we still knew what we had to do on the server. We had been practicing for 2-3 weeks and got a lot from it.

What we can take from this tournament is definitely the confidence and doing pushes, just believing in yourself and not doubting yourself, also connecting with your teammates. We can definitely take those things with us, and it's not a bad result, what we got. We beat Vitaltiy, we beat G2, and then we played up against NAVI, who've been in five finals in a row, now six, so we can be proud of it even though it fucking hurts and we could have won.

Do you think the move with NertZ, degster, and kyxsan coming in is finally paying off?

I still think we can learn a lot and improve a lot. It's definitely paying off, but slowly and steadily.

TeSeS told me in the group stage that you'd played two finals in Rio and if you lost another one, he wouldn't come back again. You didn't make it to the final this time, so does that mean we could see you back?

Yeah, it does. It would also be sad if we went to the final and lost it again for the third time, but in general, I would have loved to have gotten to the final. Also because I think FURIA will win their semi-final, so it would be a crazy experience and I think the whole scene is going to love seeing FURIA and the FURIA fans in the arena.

Going out of this tournament, what is the plan for HEROIC moving forward?

We're traveling to Elisa in Finland on Monday, we land on Tuesday, and we're playing on Wednesday, I think. So it's a pretty packed schedule but I'm excited, especially coming from this tournament, I think we can take a lot of things with us.

A pretty grueling schedule, it's been a recurring topic in some of the interviews. It's just back-to-back-to-back. There'll be a bit of a break before the RMRs, but how are you feeling about the packed calendar?

A lot of people from the outside are saying it is only the top teams that go through the events, but even us who don't qualify for playoffs are going from tournament to tournament to tournament.

Maybe we have three days at home, but it's also tournament to tournament, so pretty much every single team that's a part of these types of tournaments, no matter what place you're ending up in, you have travel every single week, it feels like. It can be pretty rough and it's going to look rougher next year, but... (laughs) hopefully, we'll figure something out.