sAw: "Overall this season hasn't been so satisfying that you can accept just quarter-finals"

The Finnish skipper foresees an interesting offseason with the transfer market kicking into gear.

HEROIC has reached the end of the line at the Perfect World Shanghai Major after a close loss to G2 in an overtime decider. Eetu "⁠sAw⁠" Saha's men opened the series against Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač and company with a one-sided victory on Ancient, but couldn't get it past the line on Nuke and faltered in overtime on Mirage.

The Finnish coach took some time after the match to give his thoughts on HEROIC's playoff run in China, the game against G2, and what comes next as the team has now entered the off-season and the market is already ramping up with a lot of movement expected going into 2025.

If you can't see the embed above, you can listen to the audio version of the interview here.

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Commiserations for the loss. You had a chance to close it out on Nuke, then again on Mirage and slipped away, how did that go from your point of view?

Our Ancient was pretty smooth, and then on Nuke, the second round on the T side, the anti-eco round, kinda got them back into the game and they just kept rolling and shutting us down. There were some closer rounds where we had a chance to get back into the game.

On Mirage we kept it close, the CT side was a bit rough in terms of economy and how it went, but we managed to make it to overtime, where we also lost a crucial clutch. I think a lot of it just came down to these clutch situations, the individual plays, the small reads which then the better team with the better cohesion or team chemistry will punish. Also in terms of firepower, it's something that will show up.

But I think we fought well in the match, it's just sad that we lost it in the end, of course, because it does feel like the three matches we lost here overall in the tournament were all pretty close. In that way, it just sucks we couldn't make it deeper.

Does it feel you threw it away with those clutches? It was several situations where it came down to some solo peeks, do you feel that the nerves got to your guys, or what happened in those situations?

I think overall in this match and the previous ones we kept it cool pretty well. But towards the end of Mirage I could notice some stress coming up a bit more than normal. Still, I think it was manageable, it wasn't like full on chaos or anything like that, so I think we kept it pretty good under control. But in some of these key moments, taking a small peek or not taking that peek, it comes down to so small details that it might have an effect. We just need to look at the match and see what actually happened again, and then talk about some situations.

When we spoke to TeSeS back at the RMR, he spoke about playoffs being the minimum goal. You fulfilled that goal - does it then feel like it is a satisfactory result at the Major to be in the top eight?

It's both yes and no. I feel like overall this season hasn't been so satisfying that you can kinda accept just quarter-finals here, even though it's the biggest tournament of the season and the most important one. It's nice to see that we are able to improve our game going into this tournament, so in a lot of ways it's been a success. But then in terms of the result, I personally would have wanted to go deeper.

It's no secret that a lot of teams are going to be looking at changes, a lot of shifting around in the scene after the Major. Is there anything you can say definitively about HEROIC, whether you will stick to this lineup moving forward or whether you'd be considering changing, or even be forced to change, for next year?

I think this player break is gonna be massive in terms of roster changes that will happen. Some of it has already started, and it feels like talks have been going on for a while and it will continue now after the Major when all the teams are done. It's gonna be an interesting one for sure, we kinda need to see what's our position as a team and as an organization for HEROIC in the market and what we can do — first of all, are we able to keep the roster, and then, second of all, what are our options overall. We just need to wait and see, but I feel like it will be an interesting one.