apEX: "Astralis' record was 10 trophies in a year and we would love to at least equal them"

Vitality's captain spoke at length about losing in Cologne, what went wrong, and finding new motivation after winning it all.

Vitality had a season like no other in the first half of 2025, winning seven straight titles, the ESL Grand Slam, and the BLAST.tv Austin Major to head into the tournament break with an impossible 34-series winstreak.

That extended to 37 in a row at IEM Cologne before a loss to MOUZ in the semi-final brought the trophy and series streak to an end, a defeat which Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire commented on afterward as Vitality not playing up to their level rather than MOUZ playing super well.

"It was painful for us, and we don't want to live that again," he tells HLTV at the media day ahead of BLAST Bounty Season 2 Finals.

The French captain spoke at length about Vitality's struggles in Cologne, what went wrong for Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut to have one of his worst series in a long time, and the discussions the team had afterward to reset heading into the rest of the season.

You can listen to the interview here.

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The first thing I want to do is go back to Cologne because there's a lot to unpack now that you've had a little bit of time to look back on it. What have you made of it, losing the streak, not winning a trophy again? What thoughts do you have about it?

The first thing is that it feels really weird to be out of a tournament after seven months without being out of any tournaments. We lost one game against Legacy, but it didn't make us lose the whole thing, so the feeling was really weird. It was painful, and really weird.

If we have to look back at what happened, I think it was a good lesson for us in the way that we came to Cologne with a hunger, like we were pretty motivated to do well there. The group stage went pretty well. The Astralis game was a bit tough at the beginning, but then we played good against G2 and The MongolZ, but when we arrived against MOUZ, it was a weird feeling.

We have no excuse, but when we talked (about it), the few days before, we couldn't deathmatch that much, we couldn't play CS that much because of the update, a lot of servers weren't updated, and our mentality was weird when we entered the game.

I think one of our strengths in the first part of the season was also the way we fought during each game, no matter what. No matter who we played. No matter how much we beat them. We always gave a lot to be able to win. But there was a strange feeling; we didn't have that, so everything was falling apart. Some players were playing below their standard, and all of that combined made us lose against MOUZ to the point that we definitely didn't deserve to win.

You made a good observation, which we saw the next day. When they asked you about MOUZ on the desk, you said that they didn't actually play that well.

Yeah.

That's crazy because even when you weren't playing that well, you were playing so well, so to see that switch flip was quite incredible. How do you flip the switch back on? How do you put that behind you?

We had a really good conversation. When we lost on Saturday, a few of us stayed, and a few of us went back home. Monday was a travel day, we had Tuesday and Wednesday off, and we just reflected by ourselves about the game and what happened. We watched the game on our own, we watched the game as a team, and we had a really good conversation together about what happened.

What happened to ZywOo, for example, who played his worst series for a long, long time? What happened to flameZ on Train, a terrible map? Me, as well, not calling the best way, and I got tilted too early. A lot of stuff happened in the wrong way, except Robin (ropz) played pretty well in that game. So yeah, we had a really interesting conversation, and the most important thing, which I keep repeating forever, and which I actually didn't do myself, as well, is that we never take anything for granted. Ever. You have to fight back every time, at every tournament, each game, each side, each round, to show that you can win games again and you can win tournaments.

The mentality we had after, in practice and playing on the side with the team, playing FACEIT and deathmatch, everything that happened after went incredibly well, and that's what I will remember because we're humans. It happened to all champions at some time; you just fall. I'm sad it was in Cologne. If I have to be fully honest, I would have preferred to have Bounty first and whiffing that one as the first (event) in the season because it's a less prestigious tournament.

It was painful for us, and we don't want to live that again. Losing while you play good and the opponent is really good? That's life. You'll always meet (others) better than you, and it's okay, but the way we lost — and that's why I said that on the desk —, I didn't feel like MOUZ were playing well. They just used our mistakes and the many mistakes we made. That's why I said, 'If they don't step up, they're not gonna win,' and that's what happened.

MOUZ is not a bad team, but I don't think they played well that day. I think on other occasions against us, they played much better than that, but at that moment, yeah, I felt like if they didn't step up massively, they wouldn't win against Spirit.

Can you give a little bit of insight about the conversations you had, or what was so good about the talks you had after the game?

The thing is, to have a great conversation in that way, we all need to look at ourselves and look back and say, 'Okay, how did we handle things from the beginning of the season again?' The practice, the individual amount of hours we spent, the quality of practice, the envy we show, our frustration, everything.

I think everyone came with really good self-criticism, and, you know, what I love about ZywOo is that he may be one of the best players ever, but I had a one-on-one conversation with him because I wanted to talk, and I didn't have to tell him anything. He was completely aware of what happened to him and how he could solve this quickly. It's just how people react to a loss.

I hope it will be the same, but I remember when we lost to Eternal Fire (now Aurora) at BLAST Bounty (Season 1), and we all stayed in the practice room and watched the game without the staff coming and saying to do that. We just had a huge conversation, and we instantly knew what we had to improve, and we were all aligned in the same way. We didn't have to say, 'Oh, come watch with us.' Everyone did it on their own, and this was a bit the same, the way everyone had self-criticism, and the way we were reacting in practice. That's what made things good.

If it's suddenly me talking, or the coach talking, and the others listening, that would not have the same power, in a way, and the good thing there is that everyone participated, and I felt like everything was smooth and everyone was on the same page again. That's what we lacked, for sure, in the semis.

Can you give some insight into what ZywOo was telling you about what happened? What went wrong for him?

ZywOo got a bit frustrated by CS, in a way. When you practice. Okay. So, practice is pretty bad, overall. The quality of practice is pretty bad, and that tilts me, as well, because you just can't train against a lot of teams. They just do things they would never do in an official, they don't play together, and bla, bla, bla, so it's a bit annoying for us. And I think his problem was that he was also focusing too much on his opponents and not on trying to find a solution or a way to get better in the practice, and focusing too much on the others, so it made him a bit frustrated — a lot — in those games. It didn't help for him to play more, and he was a bit more frustrated than usual playing CS, even playing FACEIT or that kind of stuff, so for him it was more about not enjoying it that much.

In a way, it's normal for every CS player, after you play for a long time, that sometimes, even though you win, the sides are a bit boring. Like practice every day, deathmatch, FACEIT, whatever. I think he felt like he didn't enjoy it as much as he could sometimes, and he came up with a good conclusion himself that he has to find a way to enjoy the game more and not focus so much on the opponent, and focus more on himself.

The practice right after went well, Bounty went well, and that's what matters for me. This guy is really easy to work with because he answers so fast. I don't think he ever had a slump in his career. He had maybe one event, and then came back straight after. Except the The MongolZ game, where he played super well, he was a bit shaky in the others during the tournament.

I think it's good for him to see other players winning, to see Spirit winning, to see donk doing so well that he wants to answer back straight away, and that's what I like about him, we don't need hours to speak with him, he just answers straight back, and I think that my players are like that in general. We don't need too long for them to understand what they need to do to get better.

Do you think the winning could have caused that in him? Maybe the monotony...

That's what I said before. When you win that much in a short period, because we won everything in six months, we won seven trophies in a row. At some point, when you have a break, it's like, 'It's fine, it's easy, we've done it, I'm going to do it again,' without thinking about all of the effort that was put in throughout the year.

It's things that just get out of your brain sometimes, all of the effort you make during practice, all of the effort in your communication in tournaments, how much you motivate each other, your mentality, etc. A lot more things can affect a team, and the behavior we had in practice, in the practice room, or whatever. That's what people tend to forget when they win a lot, and for us it's just getting back to the standards, and I'm sure the results will come back.

I don't know if we're going to win the same way we did the first part of the season. We all know that what we've done is crazy, and that it may not happen again, but we still want to win and show that we're the best. That's it.

Now we're at this place where you've made history, and it was all part of a streak, but it doesn't mean you can't keep making history in another way, right? How do you recalibrate to look forward to those goals and maybe regain that motivation after losing the streak?

For us, the streak was never a thing. I promise that people think it was a thing, but it wasn't.

Even if it's not something you actively think of, something passive that's just there.

I think the players are pretty honest with that, and why we've also been so good for so long, because we didn't think about that. We just thought game per game, not thinking that we needed to win this one because we're 30 in a row, etc. Even in the back of our minds, it wasn't such a big thing. The big thing was winning seven trophies in a row. That's the big thing.

That's also a streak, we can talk about that one.

Yeah, the thing is, you need to set up new goals. The first goal was to win Katowice, the second was to win the Grand Slam, and the third was to win the Major. If you do that in such short notice, and the vacations went by pretty fast, so you realize it without realizing it, and that's what's tough with CS, you know? With a lot of sports, when you win something big, you have time after to [breathes out], the season is over. There, we had less than a few weeks, you know? We needed to get back to work. That's what's tough for CS. We can't celebrate.

We had a talk at the beginning of the season, like what are our goals, etc., but a big thing just happened like three weeks before. Three weeks before the bootcamp, we were in Austin celebrating our win after the craziest season ever. So, for me, we would have needed more time, in a way, but yeah, it's just setting up new goals again, and again, and again. That's the only thing that has been the same for me.

My career has been long, and for a long time after winning Cluj, I wanted to win another Major. It took me eight years, but in six months you set up new goals. It's not easy, sometimes. I remember after Paris, for a couple weeks or a month, I was a bit empty because I didn't know what I really wanted back then. What was my goal, or what did I want it to be? Because you won the biggest thing you wanted for so long that it's not easy. So yeah, for me it's about that, about finding new goals again.

We've set up new goals. One of them was winning Cologne, but unfortunately, it didn't happen. We were thinking that if we win Cologne, maybe we could think about the second Grand Slam, because it could be possible. Now it's difficult because even if we win Pro League, we'll need to win Krakow, so it's not in our heads, but winning trophies... I know Astralis' record was 10 trophies in a year, out of 19, I think, and we would love to at least equal them, get 10 trophies that year.

A big goal is also EWC. It's not a big thing in CS yet, other than the cash prize, but for the orgs it's a big thing. I know Vitality invested some money in the other games to be able to compete there, and they expect us to do well, so for us, when we stopped Cologne, we said the big goal is EWC.

We'll do our best to win Bounty, but what happened a lot of times is that we were focusing on one tournament, but we won the one before and the one after because even though it wasn't the biggest goal, we wanted to do well every tournament, so that's what's going to happen for us. We come here to Bounty, we play our quarter-final trying to win the whole thing, and then get to EWC with the same mindset. And then the Major in Budapest, of course, why not a back-to-back? It's been a long time since a team won back-to-back Majors, since Astralis. So why not do that, as well?

This tournament itself. What do you think of the format?

It's kind of an exhibition tournament, in a way. That was their goal back then, when they did the first BLAST tournaments in '17, '18, '19. They did these two-day tournaments with six teams, just doing something fast. I think they're trying to find something fun, in a way, but as I said before, it's not the most prestigious — we're playing in a studio. It's not like our life will change if we win Bounty, or whatever, it won't be the greatest memory of our career, but for us it's a good one to get back to doing well, to playing well together, and we'll try to give our best here to win the whole thing again because we're hungry to win.