sh1ro: "Media say Vitality-Spirit in the final, but considering how we've played today..."

sh1ro was critical of the "plenty of mistakes" his team made in their match against Eternal Fire.

Spirit made quick work of the group stage at ESL Pro League, cruising through without dropping a single map. Their quarter-final opponents, Eternal Fire, endured a very different campaign, labouring their way to a 3-2 record to scrape into the playoffs.

Thus expectations were that Spirit would comfortably take down their Turkish opponents, but the reality was far different. Eternal Fire had Spirit on the ropes throughout the series, and could very easily have taken a 2-0 victory had the fine details gone a different way.

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Spirit overcome slow start from donk to beat Eternal Fire in EPL quarters

"We made plenty of mistakes on Nuke and Anubis," Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov opines of Spirit's performance. "This is why the game turned out to be so hard."

With a hard-fought victory behind him, sh1ro sat down to talk to HLTV about the series against Eternal Fire, Spirit's mentality after their loss in the final of IEM Katowice, and his thoughts about the team's campaign moving forwards.

This interview was conducted in Russian and translated by HLTV staff.

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Congratulations, what are your thoughts about this series?

Well, a good game. We made plenty of mistakes on Nuke and Anubis, this is why the game turned out to be so hard. And of course, on Mirage, there could be some problems as well, but for the most part our Mirage is better than theirs.

It seems like they had quite a lot of problems for you with their T-side, especially on the first two maps. Was it hard to play against their T-side?

I think it wasn't, actually. We just made many mistakes when we played solo in our positions and lacked some information. They surprised us a little bit on the T-side — rather me personally, not sure about the team. But nothing special, personally I felt comfortable. Such games happen, it's a good reason to improve.

Were you expecting the series to be that close? They had a bit of a rough group stage, you were really comfortable in the group stage, but it was a very close series.

I don't have any expectations. We prepare in accordance with what our opponent is, prepare and play, everything is as usual. I don't know. No expectations, I just play calmly without worrying.

After the result at IEM Katowice, was there extra motivation coming into this tournament?

Yes, of course, such disappointing losses give every player a reason to think. Just like we put FaZe down at the previous Katowice, we were put down by Vitality, and everyone made conclusions for themselves, and as a team we made conclusions as well. On that day we were much worse than Vitality. Besides that, at that event, we played a lot of maps — like the Turks have played here. We had 17 maps played for the event if I'm not mistaken.

So we've made conclusions and moved on, no big deal. We finished second - okay, that's also a good result. We will try to win, and that's it.

I think a lot of people expect the final of this tournament to be you and Vitality again. What do you think are the big things you need to do to turn the result around if that does happen?

At the very least, I will need to play better in situations like those where I wasn't getting the job done and be in good shape. We need to win the first contacts and not lose them like it was in the Katowice final.

But I don't think about the final right now. The media does say Vitality-Spirit in the final, but considering how we've played today... And tomorrow our opponent will also be tough, we haven't played against them in a while, so there can be problems.

You said that you would have a tough opponent tomorrow, MOUZ or G2. G2 is a team that you had a lot of problems against in the past, what are your thoughts about potentially playing them?

I don't know how it will go, it also will depend on my teammates, it will depend on how each of us will approach this game. But I can say that currently MOUZ is better than G2, but m0NESY is also playing so well. We'll see if MOUZ will be able to counter them. But if it will be MOUZ in the end, I don't know also, we haven't played against them in a while either.