ropz: "We're mentally one step ahead of many teams"

The Estonian rifler spoke about Vitality reaching their 18th playoff outing in a row.

Vitality have looked virtually unstoppable in 2025, racking up five tournament victories in a row, a 27-match LAN win streak, and an ESL Grand Slam. The international combine now have their sights set on a Major win at the BLAST.tv Austin Major, but Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire's men have one more stop at IEM Dallas first.

The European side have gotten off to a solid start in Texas, picking up wins over Legacy and GamerLegion to lock in their spot in the playoffs.

Shortly after his team's win over GamerLegion, Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool spoke with HLTV regarding Vitality's ever-growing match win streak, the possibility of a second ESL Grand Slam in 2025, and the ways in which the team is combatting burnout as the Major fast approaches.

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Here with ropz after taking down GamerLegion in Dallas. With that win you're now in playoffs, how does it feel?

It feels good. It's another important playoff streak win. We already have quite a long one, I think it's 17 [Editor's note: it is now 18 playoff appearances in a row], way before when I was here, so it's an important win. A win streak is a win streak; we don't really talk about it... we talk about it but we don't really care about it that much. The end goal is to win tournaments, and if you keep winning you will maintain the streak, and that's how it is, not much to say about that.

When you say not talking about the streak do you mean the playoff streak specifically or the match win streak?

The match win streak.

Even though you guys don't talk about it, do you personally feel that there is some added pressure?

It's so funny, I mean, we don't care about it all. We know it's coming, the loss, then we're going to bounce back and we'll see how that's going to go, but there's no pressure added to the win streak. It's like you meet some of the guys in the tournaments, the enemies or whatever, and they say, 'We want to beat your streak and get you off the win streak,' but we don't even care.

We're mentally one step ahead, I feel like, of many teams. But, of course, for them it would mean a lot to break our streak. We're here to win trophies, and we take each tournament separately with a new mindset, a fresh one. We had a week off and kind of forgot about everything.

Obviously you guys didn't play in Astana, so what were you up to during that time off?

We had two tournaments back-to-back before Dallas, it was Melbourne and BLAST Rivals, and then right after BLAST Rivals we took a week off. We try to have a really structured schedule. We have some tournaments back-to-back and then we have some sort of a small break in between tournaments. So it was two weeks between now and BLAST Rivals, so we could fit a week off there.

Obviously, the thing is, if you win the tournaments then the schedule makes perfect sense; you're winning and then going into a week off. But if you lose that tournament, should we have a week off, should we keep practicing? For now, the structure is perfect the way we are performing, so everything is playing well together.

I was going to ask about the potential for burnout, but it sounds like with the system you guys have here, as long as you keep winning...

As long as everything happens as planned, there's nothing better you can do. I think we're managing everything as best as we can. You would do that even if you lost. You would think about squeezing in an extra day of practice if you lose, not just a full week off, stuff like that.

Back to the game you just had, I think that GamerLegion match was a little closer than people might have expected, especially with a stand-in. Did you expect it to be so close?

I mean, I go into every game with an expectation that the opponent can have a good game. I think for this specific one, we had a really good feeling, since we're coming in hot and have a lot of momentum. I think on Mirage they played a bit different than we expected them to. On the T-side they did a lot of A splits, and that's kind of what we were having trouble with. I think when we switched to T-side, apEX was calling a fantastic T-side, we got into a completely empty bombsite at one point. T-side, we were flying high.

Nuke, I think again we got quite a good start, the score was 3-3 as far as I remember, and then we had a few crucial mistakes which led to them getting away with the scoreline, 8-4 at halftime. We come back, we take the pistol, not the first of the comebacks we've done so far. It was close, and I think they played well and we made some mistakes, but it's always like that.

You guys just came off the Grand Slam, and some people have talked about it although we're a little far off now...

I know what's coming. (laughs)

There is the possibility that a second Grand Slam could happen this year, and Dallas would be the first step. Is that something you've given any thought to at this point?

The only way that we talk about it is just through jokes. I mean, it's not a realistic goal, come on. At this point, we've already done some really impressive stuff, winning the Grand Slam at this point, five tournament wins in a row. At some point, it's too much, but obviously, if we keep performing like this, we're never going to say no to the wins, and that's what we're here to do.

I think many times we've said that for Vitality the last year was really disappointing, and I think this is the perfect way to bounce back and do the best we can and take everything from this moment that is possible to take. I think in terms of the goals, I think the biggest one would be the Major, coming up in a few weeks now, so that's where the biggest focus will go. Outside of that, we will see what each tournament brings.

At this point, the teams that have been the closest to catching up to you here are MOUZ and Falcons, and it has started to get quite close. As you're approaching the Major, are you worried you may not be able to fend them off long enough?

That's a tough question. There's been a lot of close finals, but I'm not really sure how to think of it. They're getting better definitely, both MOUZ and Falcons came into this year changing players, so each of these teams is getting better. For us, being at the top, we obviously have a lot of eyes on us, as usual when you're the number-one team, and we've been there for a long time, so people know how we play. For us, it's a lot about the individual form which is keeping us a step ahead.

We're doing our best to... we have a tough schedule as well, we're winning tournaments and it's really awesome but it means we're going every tournament, all the way, we never go home early. If you lose, you go home a few days earlier, you get more practice time, for example. That's part of the schedule and the structure that we're always managing as best as we can. We're trying to squeeze in new stuff whenever we can, and I think for the Major we will do a lot. For example, we will definitely have a bootcamp for the Major and stuff like that, so you can expect to see new things. We'll take it from there.

For the bootcamp, will you guys be going back to Europe after Dallas for that?

Correct, yes. We will be going back to Europe, because that's the beautiful part of Stage 3; we get to play a bit later and we have more time to prepare. I think that's what's going to help give us an edge if we do well.