ZywOo: "It's hard to play like this in the semi-final of IEM Cologne"

The French superstar acknowledged that it was an off day for him. "Almost everything went wrong on my side," he said.

Vitality were knocked out out of IEM Cologne on Saturday following a 0-2 defeat to MOUZ in the semi-finals. The loss ends the team's impressive 37-series winning streak, which had started on February with a 2-0 success against 3DMAX at IEM Katowice.

It was an evening to forget for Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut, who looked a far cry from his dominant self as he posted a 0.63 series rating, the second-lowest on the team. Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool was in fact the only player on Vitality who ended the match with an above-average rating as the team looked surprisingly off the pace throughout the series.

"It's hard to play like this in the semi-final of IEM Cologne," he said. "It's hard because we could have done much better. That's sad."

He added, "It was an off day for me individually, almost everything went wrong on my side, so I couldn't do anything. It was tough to play. I couldn't find my way to play."

For Vitality, there is little time to lick their wounds before they face NRG in BLAST Bounty Season 2, where they wil lbe hoping to go back to winning ways.

"It's been a while since we lost in a best-of-three or playoff or whatever, so obviously we're going to have a good talk, find out what happened between us and during the game," he said.

"Let's see what's going to happen, for now we haven't had the talk yet."

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Commiserations, ZywOo. Of course, the streak ends here. Tell me about it, what's your initial reaction?

I think it hurts because I don't think we played well at all. Obviously on my side as well, individually we were pretty shaky today. It's hard to play like this in the semi-final of IEM Cologne. It's hard because we could have done much better. That's sad.

What happened from your side? One of the worst games in your career for sure—what went wrong?

I don't know. That's hard to say, I don't know what happened, to be honest. If I knew it in the game, I would have fixed it. It was an off day for me individually, almost everything went wrong on my side, so I couldn't do anything. It was tough to play. I couldn't find my way to play.

Can you tell me what MOUZ did to finally break you guys? Seven times in a row that you beat them ahead of this, what was it in the game that made it so difficult this time?

I would say almost everything. We didn't play well, so it was tough for us to find solutions, to find gaps, to find the individual moves to reset them during the game. It was really tough, we didn't find anything, maybe at the end of Train we were trying to fight back, but it was already too late, it was already 12. It was tough.

How is the team going to address this loss moving forward? Obviously, it's your first loss in a long time, what is the talk going to be after this?

I don't know, to be honest. Like you say, it's been a while since we lost in a best-of-three or playoff or whatever, so obviously we're going to have a good talk, find out what happened between us and during the game. Let's see what's going to happen, for now we haven't had the talk yet.