SunPayus: "I feel like the young guys like to listen to me"

SunPayus is a trusted voice in the new HEROIC as he looks to bounce back from his Falcons stint.

Álvaro "⁠SunPayus⁠" García's first event with HEROIC can only be termed a success, after they made it the top eight of BLAST Bounty.

The Spanish AWPer was benched by Falcons in October for Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev despite being the team's highest-rated player at the time, but was offered an escape by Eetu "⁠sAw⁠" Saha in January.

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sAw: "I think SunPayus will feel the joy again with this team"

The re-union with sAw, who was SunPayus' coach in ENCE when he reached the number six spot on the top 20 ranking in 2023, is one that makes sense.

"sAw is a close friend of mine and we have really good chemistry in the server," SunPayus told the BLAST broadcast just before he swung by HLTV's microphone for a quick exit interview.

The fledgling roster's next task is IEM Katowice's play-in, with the team ranked at 26 on the Valve Global Standings and needing more to secure invites to all of the big events.

But they will be able to count on the return of Andrey "⁠tN1R⁠" Tatarinovich after visa issues ruled him out of Bounty's LAN stage. "It's going to be a long road, and we need to slowly grind. I'm 100% sure we will be on top at one point," SunPayus told HLTV.

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Listen to the interview here.

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How do you look back on the first event together?

We should be happy, we came without expectations. We need to play officials to know exactly how the practice is going. We know how practice is going but we need officials, right? It was really good for us, we're going to improve a lot from this match against Spirit even though we lost.

How did the young guys handle the stage?

Really well, to be honest, I didn't think any of them were different from online. We played really well on Anubis, it was mini details, a few duels, they were playing faster than we expected. But anyway, if we win an important duel in one round, things are different. Nuke, nothing bad, we didn't practice too much and they played good. But the boys played really well and the communication was good like always so I'm pretty happy.

What is it like being the experienced one on the team, obviously very different to Falcons last year?

I like it a lot. I feel like sometimes the boys can listen to me, 'he has experience,' you know. It's not like I have a big voice where whatever I say is the most important thing in the world, no, but I feel like they like to listen to me. And I like to listen to them too, they have the patience, they have everything, like young guys right? It's really nice to have this mix.

With sAw as well, how much input are you able to have into the system with LNZ?

To be honest, it's obviously important to bring the AWP into the system but it's mainly from sAw and LNZ. Because sAw knows how I play and how I move, overall, he's already adapting with LNZ towards me. But I think they both fixed the system, and make me comfortable, and I am also adapting to the boys and how they play and how they react to things to mix everything and create a new system together.

Do you think you can get back in the top 20 individually this year? It seems you're much more comfortable than last year.

I don't know, I don't know. You never know the future or the results. I don't care about the top 20, my focus is to be back playing most of the tournaments and I think it will take time, step by step. This tournament we did well, we didn't have practice obviously, and we shouldn't expect us to all of a sudden qualify for everything. It's going to be a long road, and we need to slowly grind. I'm 100% sure we will be on top at one point.