m0NESY: "I am not satisfied, I want more"

Even after securing his third trophy of the year, m0NESY is already looking forward to Perfect World Shanghai Major.

G2 needed to make a statement after their dismal IEM Rio campaign, where they exited in last place, and they did so in emphatic fashion at BLAST Premier World Final. After kicking things off with an embarrassing 0-13 map loss to Liquid, G2 righted the ship and marched imperiously to the title.

An absolutely vital cog in the G2 machine, Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov topped the charts across the event in rating, KPR and a plethora of other categories, not only bagging his third MVP award of the year, but overshadowing Danil "⁠donk⁠" Kryshkovets in the grand final to add to his case when it comes time to decide the No. 1 player of the year.

Fresh from G2's trophy-winning campaign, m0NESY sat down for an interview with HLTV to discuss G2's dominant grand final performance, their run overall, his hunger for more trophies, and his level in 2024 compared to last year.

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

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Ilya, a 3-0 victory and you are champions again. What does it feel like to win like this?

First of all, I feel… I don't know. When you start a tournament you don't think about your goal is to win, you just think about game by game. This feeling in the end, when you play the grand final and win, you see people around talking about you and your team, and it motivates the team and especially me to play even more and give 100%. In the end all these people who are writing shit just disappear, and it's the best. It feels like this, a very good feeling.

I'm also happy for my team, happy for everyone, and especially for malbsMd because it's his first year in tier one and he already got two BLAST trophies, World Final and Fall Final. Very nice.

Heading into the final you had won your previous four matches against Spirit, three of which without losing a single map. How confident were you heading into the game? Did you feel like you had the mental edge?

Honestly I don't know if we had some mental edge against them. I can say from my side that when I came to the game, I'm always focused on myself and on my team, I don't like putting too much focus on enemies. Honestly we've just played a lot of times against them and we kind of understand their playstyle. Sometimes they could surprise us, yes, but in general it feels like they play the same way, and obviously we were confident coming into this matchup. I would say when we play against any team we always feel confident, so I don't think we need to make it special.

malbsMd had a great showing on Mirage, NiKo went huge on Anubis, and huNter- had a great Dust2. It just shows how dangerous the team is when everything is clicking.

Yeah, when everything is clicking and everyone is playing well... And sometimes malbsMd is playing positions where he cannot get too much impact, maybe sometimes it affects him because he is not active, but we have these roles in the team so we cannot really do anything about it. But he always pulls some very good moments, he's insanely sharp, his aim is on point, he's playing very good in clutches and any scenario of a round. When everything is clicking and the calls are good, it goes very well.

Sometimes it can go like 6-0, for example on Dust2, and for some reason I kill a guy on B and I want to run out, in my head sometimes I just want to finish the round faster, for some reason, and it can be dangerous for us. Especially for me, because I can do some stupid shit sometimes. It can work sometimes, and sometimes it doesn't.

Were you worried on Mirage when donk got that crazy 4k with the Deagle? Because that gave Spirit some new life, they came back during the first half, but then obviously you destroyed them in the second half.

I don't know how it is in English, but they started breathing after this round. I think it was a very bad mistake… well not mistake, but still we did mistakes that round against eco. We just played alone, solo, and I was talking exactly about these rounds in the previous question. From these rounds we need to learn, and if we can close these rounds better, we will be even better. But it didn't affect us very much, I would say.

There were two things that stood out in your campaign here in Singapore: your amazing CT side, and your crazy pistol round record. For example, at Fall Final you had the second-worst CT side of the entire tournament. What changed?

We just learned from mistakes. We learn from mistakes, we improve, we adapt, and I think that's everything that I can say. If players are going to play the same game, do the same mistakes, I think it's bad, but in our team everyone learns from his mistakes, from enemy mistakes, from other player's mistakes, and it helps us to improve. We also had a bootcamp before and I think it had so much impact.

You said at Fall Final after winning the tournament that you were angrier and hungrier, because you had only won two tournaments at that point. Now you have won a third one, the biggest of the three, are you more satisfied with what the team has accomplished this year?

I am not satisfied, I want more. The last one is Shanghai, the last tournament of the year, and we are going to put all our focus and all our concentration, everything into this tournament. Obviously when you win a tournament you are satisfied, but you are satisfied for some time and on the next day, you want even more. I don't think a player can always be satisfied, he always wants to win, and that's what I mean, coming into the next tournament everyone will want to win the last Major of the year.

You have been incredibly consistent this year, this is your third MVP medal of 2024. How would you compare your performances and individual level this year to last year, when you were named the fourth-best player in the world?

I'm going to say that I love my teammates, just because of who they are. I'm surrounded by great people since I joined G2 who have been helping me always during my career in tier-one. They've always been helping me when I struggled, always helped me to learn from my mistakes, especially NiKo, he was always my mentor or teacher, and obviously the rest of the guys as well. Since last year I improved a lot, not only individually, I think also in the team, in the macro. A lot of things I learned just because of them, without them I would be nothing and would learn much much slower.

Now it's all about the Major, the one title that continues to elude the team. What can you say about the preparation for the team? After you fly back home, how many days are you going to rest before the bootcamp, and does this result give you confidence for the RMR and Major?

It gives us confidence, 100%. During the RMR we have to still say focused, we shouldn't think because of this tournament, this victory, that we are going to smash everyone. Obviously you are confident, but you don't have to overthink a lot. We haven't discussed yet about our prep, how many off days we will have, but I'm pretty sure we will have a lot of days to practice.