phzy: "If we were to beat Vitality, now's the time after they're just traveling from Australia"

Wildcard have a tough opening match at the BLAST Rivals, but they're hoping to catch the busy bees off their game.

Wildcard were a team that impressed towards the back end of 2024, but they have struggled to kick on this year. The American-European combine exited BLAST Bounty, IEM Katowice Play-in and PGL Cluj-Napoca early doors, and recently struggled against lesser opposition in CCT Global Finals.

"At the beginning of the year we did go out pretty fast in most of the big tournaments that we played, but at the same time we had really close games," Love "⁠phzy⁠" Smidebrant states when reflecting on Wildcard's year thus far. "It really felt like we had a chance in each game. I think we just need a little bit of that extra, and hopefully we'll bring that here."

phzy and his team will face a stiff first test if they are to improve their fortunes, being matched up with Vitality in their opening game in BLAST Rivals. "It's not easy, obviously. We'll do our best to play our game and we'll see where it takes us."

phzy addressed his team's current form, their struggles at the start of the year and in CCT Global Finals, and much more in this interview with HLTV ahead of BLAST Rivals Season 1.

Listen to the interview here.

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You're coming into BLAST Rivals as, excuse the pun, a wildcard team. Did that come as a surprise to you guys when there was also Liquid up for grabs as the North American one?

There were a lot of tournaments now at the same time, so we thought we'd get at least an invite to one of them. And here we are at BLAST.

Tell me about getting the opportunity to play at this level again. At the beginning of the year it didn't so great, how much better do you think it can go this time?

At the beginning of the year we did go out pretty fast in most of the big tournaments that we played, but at the same time we had really close games versus The MongolZ when they were like top three and versus every team we played, it really felt like we had a chance in each game. I think we just need a little bit of that extra, and hopefully we'll bring that here.

You guys spent some time here in Europe already, playing the CCT Global Finals. I'm sure that didn't go the way you had hoped, but did that help to get you prepared for the start of the tournament here?

Yeah, hopefully. We've been spending a bit of time here in Europe with the Americans being in Poland and me and susp at home, so that's also nice. It's been a lot of back and forth, playing some qualifiers in North America and then going here to play CCT. It didn't really go as we wanted it to in CCT, but also the final game against HEROIC was one those losses that felt like we really had that game, and then we let it slip away.

You guys are playing Vitality first. They're coming off of Melbourne, but regardless, they are the best team in the world at the moment and in this massive streak. What's the mindset heading into the first game?

Yeah (laughs). It's not easy, obviously. We'll do our best to play our game and we'll see where it takes us. If we were to beat them at any time, now's the time after they're just traveling back home from Australia.

Just hoping for a bit of jetlag?

Yeah, that's an advantage. At least that's something.

What sort of prerequisites do you feel like you'll need to hit to have a fighting chance?

They're obviously, as you said, the best team now. We've been playing okay versus better opponents, so hopefully that little bit of extra that we need might be the jetlag that they have now.

It's still a bit of a run up to the Major after this, but this will be your last chance to get official results under your belt before Austin. What are you looking to get out of Rivals?

Making it out of groups is probably our first goal in this tournament. Obviously first game we have Vitality, and then either MOUZ or paiN. paiN we beat before in the RMR in Shanghai, so we feel like that they're a pretty good opponent for us if they happen to lose versus MOUZ. Getting out of the groups is our first goal, and then we'll take it from there, I guess.

I wanted to ask you a little bit about the situation that happened around the MRQ. Maybe I'm reading too much into a single emoji that you posted on Twitter, but it felt like you weren't happy with being left out of the roster for the Astana closed qualifier to avoid the European MRQ. Can you walk me through how that went from your point of view?

I don't really wanna get too much into it, but I can say I was not happy with the decision being made, that's as far as I'll take it.

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