ZywOo: "If Falcons keep playing like this, they have the opportunity to be top 2, top 1 of the year"

"There was no extra pressure about this," the French AWPer said about the win streak. "I think for us it's just a bonus."

Vitality won BLAST Rivals Season 1 after another marathon of a final, their third consecutive five-map final after BLAST Open Lisbon and IEM Melbourne. Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut capped off a fantastic tournament with a 1.30 rating to win his 25th MVP to further distance himself from Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev on the list of players with the most individual honors.

It's the fifth straight trophy tournament victory for Vitality, who are on a 25-match win streak, the second-longest in the game's history. Heading into IEM Dallas and the Austin Major, ZywOo has no doubt that Falcons pose the biggest threat to his team.

"If they keep playing like this and keep showing a great face, they have the opportunity to be top 2, top 1 of the year," he told HLTV after the match. "They just need to find the balance between everyone and they can show a really great face for the future. I think they will be really competitive for the Major."

Vitality's players will now enjoy a week off before turning their attention to IEM Dallas, their final stop before the Austin Major. Though they have been a step ahead of everyone else this year, ZywOo is not taking anything for granted.

"The Major is different; there's always different pressure, a different thing, maybe we're going to put more pressure on our shoulders because we are at the top 1 and we don't want to fail," he said.

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ZywOo, congratulations, the fifth win in a row and the fifth MVP in a row. Are you guys getting tired of this?

Of course not, never getting tired of winning. It's just a really good feeling for the team, making sure that we keep going as far as we can even though we are not feeling the best. We are still playing really good CS together and we really enjoy for the rest of the team to play this kind of CS, like Vitality like to do.

And it was another close best-of-five against Falcons, not quite a triple overtime decider this time, but you almost did it in four and took it in your own hands on Nuke. Tell me about how taxing this final was compared to the last. Was it a bit easier compared to the last?

I wouldn't say it was easier because Mirage, we were down 12-3 and we came back. I felt like Mirage was the same game as Nuke [in Melbourne], we come back, we almost win it, and we go to overtime... I don't know what happened, to be honest, this game was crazy as fuck as well, to be honest.

On Nuke we knew that if we didn't give our best, we could lose the game, so we needed to give it all, even though we knew we have the better team and better teamplay, in terms of individuals they are really shooting well. It was an interesting game anyway, a hard game to play.

You also lost the Inferno streak. Losing the first map and one that you'd been so confident on in the past, did it shake the confidence a little bit?

I wouldn't say it shook it, but it's hard to always pick the same map. It was the third time we picked Inferno against them, I think, so, you know, at some point they will find some mistake or solutions.

I don't think we played shaky, it was also them playing really well on this map, I think they wanted to really show they could beat us on this map. Even though we lost Inferno, we knew on Dust2 that we could beat them because we have a really good Dust2 as well. We lost to them twice as well, so I think it was kind of back and forth, they wanted to win Inferno, we wanted to win Dust2.

Do you see Falcons as your biggest rival heading into the rest of the season up to the Major?

Of course. If they keep playing like this and keep showing a great face, they have the opportunity to be top 2, top 1 of the year. They are really tough opponents, they have m0NESY, who can show up, NiKo, who's helping the team now with the calling on CT side. They just need to find the balance between everyone and they can show a really great face for the future. I think they will be really competitive for the Major.

I know it's always hard for the team to consider, but the talks are whether this is the best streak of all time, where you are in terms of an era now that you keep racking up trophy after trophy. Where do you see yourselves in that conversation?

To be honest, we are not even thinking about the streak. You can ask everyone; even yesterday the game against Spirit, no one said anything about the streak. We were so focused on the semi-final, how we were going to prepare and beat them, so there was no extra pressure about this. I think for us it's just a bonus.

We are enjoying the moment, we are enjoying playing with the team. I don't think we wanted to create an era; obviously it's kind of coming, but we are just playing with our feeling now and just going for it. We are not really thinking about it for now.

Tell me about the rest of the season. You have a couple of weeks up to Dallas and after that it's the major. How is the next month going to look and where will you put the most effort leading up to Austin?

The main focus we're going to have is on rest. We are tired, all of us, so we're going to take a week off. But after that we still need to work hard, even though we've won five tournaments in a row. The Major is different; there's always different pressure, a different thing, maybe we're going to put more pressure on our shoulders because we are at the top 1 and we don't want to fail.

We don't want to fall into this trap, so we're going to be focused on that, we're going to work hard before this, we're going to bootcamp, focus, figure out what we need to bring for the Major, and I think we're going to do it really well.