Neityu: "Our strength is that we're not scared, and we showed that in the final"

The French player admitted that even his team was surprised with their campaign in Espoo.

The new-look ENCE roster exceeded even the wildest expectations at Elisa Masters Espoo as they lifted the trophy in front of a Finnish crowd after beating HEROIC 3-1 in the final.

The victory was made all the more impressive by the fact that the team had just five days of practice with their newest recruits, Ryan "⁠Neityu⁠" Aubry and Kacper "⁠xKacpersky⁠" Gabara. Both players had little tier-one experience, yet their game showed a maturity beyond their years.

After the final, the French player sat down with HLTV to discuss an array of topics, including the unexpected trophy in Espoo, the high praise from Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire and his early days competing in local LAN events.

You got a trophy in your first international LAN. How do you feel about that?

It feels amazing. No one expected us to win the tournament, even us. We had a good mindset to show good things, maybe win one match or some matches, just show a good level, and yeah, it's pretty amazing.

You talk about wanting to win one game, but not only did you win a game, but you also won four out of five and beat all of the favorites — 9z, The MongolZ, and HEROIC —, and you did it in important matches: the group decider, semis and the best-of-five grand final. Tell me about this magic run.

We beat only the favorites, so I think it's a really, really good run. We could have made the final by beating the lower teams, but here it was insane. We were all on the same page mindset-wise, we all had a really good mindset, everyone was giving 100%, we had the momentum with the Finnish crowd, and yeah, it was magic. I don't have any other explanation.

What is it about this team that's clicking?

We are all really strong individuals. People would probably not expect us to be really good, but we just showed we can compete with the world's top 10 teams, and I think gla1ve is leading really well. He's making really good calls and he gives every player a lot of freedom so that everyone can just express themselves. Teams didn't have a lot of data on us because it was our first tournament, of course, so people were surprised by our gameplay.

Not only that, but gla1ve fragged out in the final.

It's really good, he was really confident. There is not much to say; it was really good, and he carried us.

Like a proud dad taking the kids through the final.

Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Actually, you could think that this is this guy's first tournament, a young guy winning his first tournament, but when you see he has four Majors and a bunch of trophies, it's really funny, as well. But yeah, it's fantastic.

You got a shoutout from apEX saying you'd end up on a big team pretty soon. You've taken a step in that direction with ENCE. What's it like getting a little bit of the spotlight shone on you lately?

It gave me some pressure, of course, because now people talk about me as the hope of French CS and stuff, but I think I mostly get confidence because I try to convert that pressure into confidence like, 'OK, I'm good, now I'm going to show it,' it's not like, 'Oh, I have to show it, I'm going to fail under pressure.' It feels really nice.

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I think French CS is not in a really good state, so there are not a lot of players, and being a part of that is really good. But yeah, it mostly gives me confidence, and you could see in the tournament that it helped me a lot in performing.

It was your first international LAN with a crowd and a stage where you could get feedback and reactions from the crowd. What was it like to play in a setting like this for the first time?

I played some LANs in France. I won the first one I played, so it was a joke with the team, as well. I won my first French LAN, now I win my first international one. I was fully confident about my gameplay.

I was not really under pressure; one of my strengths is converting that into positive things, so I wasn't really scared. That's also a good strength of the team; nobody was scared of the game, or the crowd, so I think it gave us a lot of confidence.

The French scene does have a bit of a LAN circuit. How helpful has it been for you to come with at least a bit of experience at the local level?

The local level is not really that good, of course, and now we have a lot fewer LANs in France, which is kind of bad, but I think it helped me a bit in some ways, like the trash talk and stuff. I could feel that mood in the group stage, which was closed and not with the crowd. I would say it helped me trash talk and mood-wise.

How did you do in your second French LAN?

I won it, as well.

Easy. So ENCE will win the next LAN, as well?

Yeah, probably, yeah. We'll see! [laughs]

HEROIC came from a very good run in Rio, and it looked like they were doing quite well here. There were some exciting moments, and it was tight at times. How was it to go into this match against a team that beat you in the group stage and you got to beat them here?

It's really nice because it's a top-11 team, and they were the big favorites of the tournament. When we got to the final we all trusted in ourselves. It was like a practice match. Our strength is that we're not scared, and we showed in that match that we're not scared. I think they were a bit, and I also felt it in how they played. So yeah, we just took advantage of that.

We prepared it well, we had a good game plan, like every match, and we made sure to just play our own game and not overthink or change everything. For example, on Vertigo, we changed some stuff when we could have just ended it earlier from 11-2. But yeah, like I said, it was a basic match. We weren't scared, it didn't give us extra pressure, and we took it as another playoff match.