ZywOo: "We didn't play our A-game for all the tournament"

The French superstar recognizes that there were cracks in Vitality's gameplay during IEM Dallas.

Entering IEM Dallas with five event wins in a row to their name, Vitality looked unstoppable as the European side set their sights on the last event prior to the BLAST.tv Austin Major.

In the end, Vitality's reign of terror continued, as Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire's men trounced MOUZ in the final 3-0 to lay claim to their sixth consecutive trophy in 2025. Vitality were not completely flawless in Dallas; the team faltered for the first time ever on Train in a tight semi-final against Falcons, and only narrowly overcame The MongolZ during the group stage.

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Vitality sweep MOUZ to win IEM Dallas and make it six trophies in a row

Despite being behind Ádám "⁠torzsi⁠" Torzsás statistically for much of the event, Vitality star Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut stepped up for his team in the grand final of IEM Dallas with a 1.52 rating to clinch his sixth MVP medal in a row.

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ZywOo earns 26th career MVP at IEM Dallas

Not long after Vitality's win over MOUZ, ZywOo chatted with HLTV regarding the team's sixth consecutive win, the mistakes the team made during the event, and how Vitality intends to prepare for the Austin Major just around the corner.

You can read or watch the full interview below, or listen on Spotify.

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Here with ZywOo after a hard-fought win over MOUZ at IEM Dallas. You've got your sixth MVP in a row; how are you feeling?

Of course, I feel great. Huge win for us, I think.

(apEX: Another [MVP]?)

Yeah, I didn't know. (laughs)

We were really confident before joining this final because we know how to beat them, how to beat MOUZ, because it's been five times in a row, six now. So we are really confident, we didn't put any pressure on our shoulders because we know how strong we are now. I think we were really confident before joining the final.

The last few finals you guys have had were particularly close, and this one really wasn't with the exception of the first map. Why was it so straightforward this time around?

I actually think we didn't play our A-game for all the tournament except the final. For us, it was a bit shaky this tournament, to be honest, in terms of individual and team play as well. We were losing some clutches, like the 1v5. In the past two tournaments, we didn't lose these.

We are making more mistakes, more individually, and that's what we're trying to not do, because at the Major we're going to have more pressure as the favorites. We need to make sure we're not making these kinds of mistakes in important moments. We just need to play together. I think we played really good in this final, better than usual.

You got it on the nose there, you also lost Train as well at this event; it was a bit rough earlier. How do you aim to fix that before the Major?

We know we are good on almost every map now. We are not scared to pick any map into anyone. I think we're just going to be focused on what we like to do, and the mistakes we did as well. We just need to improve that, and we're going to be ready for the Major.

At this point, your win streak is up to 30 wins in a row. Interview after interview you guys keep saying it doesn't affect you. Now that you have to juggle the Major and the streak, is it not on your mind at all?

No, because we are so far behind NIP, so we need 30 more wins. Obviously, we are not focused on it, we are just focused on ourselves. Like people say, after we broke the Liquid record, everyone was surprised because we were not even focused on it; we just focused on how we were going to play the game.

For us, it's a bonus. Every game, if we win it, is a bonus. Even though we're gonna maybe someday lose one game, I don't think we're going to be sad, because at some point it's a really huge win for us.

Now that you have won IEM Dallas there is the potential for a second Grand Slam this year. Have you guys thought about that?

Of course not! Imagine winning a second Grand Slam, it's gonna be insane. I mean, we can talk about it if we win Cologne. We're going to put the tournament on the table, maybe we'll think about the Grand Slam, but for now, we are not. The next stage is the Major, so we are really focused on it right now, so we won't focus on it until the second season.

The Major is up next, and it's just been deep run after deep run for you guys. I imagine you need a break and some practice. What is the schedule looking like between now and the Major?

Actually, we're going to have a few days off for break, but after that we're going to play in a bootcamp. We're going to bootcamp in Paris, time to train as hard as we can, because, before joining this tournament we only have five days to work together. I think we want to do more before joining the Major, so we're just going to do bootcamp, working hard. That's going to be the main thing; I don't think we're going to take too much rest.