flashie: "I'm going to tell the boys that I'm really proud of how they played"

Liquid's coach believes games like the one against Vitality will help the team make progress in the future.

Liquid are out of the BLAST Bounty 2025 Season 2 Finals in Malta after an 0-2 loss to Vitality, but it wasn't given away easily to the number one team in the world.

The Kamil "⁠siuhy⁠" Szkaradek-led squad brought two maps back from the brink, first on Train, from a 3-11 deficit, and then on Nuke, from 6-10. They ended in overtime, although not in Liquid's favor, as Vitality showed their pedigree in the extra rounds and took both maps, 16-13 and 19-16, respectively.

Viktor "⁠flashie⁠" Tamás Bea made some positive comments about the game despite the loss still stinging immediately after its conclusion. "We can see that we can compete, and that's a very good sign," he said before later adding that "it's games like this that will help us in the future."

Tough loss. Two overtimes, but at the same time, it's two overtimes against Vitality. It was a good fight you put up, so tell me about the positives you can see after a match in which you brought it back to OT twice, and how you did it.

I will start with the first map. We lost both pistols, so it was a bit rough to get into the game, but once we got into the game, we managed to win a lot of consecutive rounds, which gave us overtime, and we had chances there, but unfortunately, we couldn't take it.

On Nuke, it was a bit of a different story. We were kind of in the driving seat throughout most of the game. We started well on CT and managed to let some rounds slip after, but we managed to come back on the T side again, and we had, I think, four match points overall throughout the game, which obviously hurts us a lot now.

Especially that 4vs2 in the end, but at the same time, like you said, it's good progress we've made so far, and obviously, there's a lot more work to be done. But we can see that we can compete, and that's a very good sign.

For a team that has been downtrodden for a while, do you think being able to put up this fight against Vitality, and especially in the fashion it was done, with the comebacks and pushing it to overtime... Do you think this will at least give the players a bit of hope and motivation for the next matches?

Yeah, I think everyone is aware that we're capable of competing with these teams, but we just needed time, and now I guess this will push our confidence a little bit more, which is needed for us. But this will be all for nothing if we don't keep working hard. The key is to keep working, keep being humble, and keep our goals ahead of ourselves.

I remember the tweet that Twistzz put out after you lost online to VP.Prodigy, and he was saying that you weren't playing like a team. Do you think thoughts like this may be pushed a bit further out from the mind after a game like today's?

Yeah, we all have bad days, and when we have bad days, we can have some bad thoughts, but overall, the team is in a good place. We're trying to play like a team always and, most of the time, we succeed in playing as a team, but it doesn't always translate into results, unfortunately. That's what we're working on, on being more consistent, and like you said, being more and more of a team in the server.

Tell me about Nuke. You started pretty well on the CT side, but didn't close it out as strongly as you could. If you had gotten a couple more rounds, it could have been a different best-of-three. Tell me about what failed on that side.

I think they just outplayed us in some key rounds, and because of that, our economy got worse and worse, and we couldn't get a lot of buy rounds going because even the rounds we won, there were some scrappy wins, which means we lost a lot of guns and we had to rebuy them. It was more like an economic issue and some good executes on their part.

Tell me about the mindset on Train. It was a rough first half, so tell me about getting back the belief and the possibility to bring it back and get it to overtime. What was it like listening to the team talk as it was happening?

Even before the game, we knew that this was a game for us to learn from, and that we have literally nothing to lose. I wanted the players to fully believe in us being able to win, and also to play really confidently because if we can do that, then it can give us an edge over them, who have more pressure because they just cannot lose this game, right?

On Nuke, I felt like we took it the same way, kind of, round by round, step by step, trying to bring it back, and once we got closer and closer, everyone just tasted that we could actually do it. In the end, it fell apart, but we had everything to finish this map.

Vitality is the best team in the world, and when it gets to these situations, it's the team in that position that can usually bring it through. What do you think this Liquid needs in order to have more confidence in those situations, the tight overtimes, that last 4vs2, moments like that, when ZywOo was going crazy and so on?

It's games like this that will help us in the future. Just for us to be more calm in these situations, this experience will help us there, and I think the biggest issue was that becuase we were a bit nervous and kind of panicky, we skipped some steps that we shouldn't have and that's why they could win these, like 4vs2s, because kind of hurried the situation compared to the other rounds, where we were actually taking it step by step, and just go through all of the necessary things to win the round.

Can you let me know what you're going to tell the team when you go and sit with them, what you're going to try and convey to the guys?

It really hurts now, to not win a map in this close best-of-three, but at the same time, I'm going to tell the boys that I'm really proud of how they played today because this is what we're striving for since I joined, to show good CS, and we showed good CS today. It wasn't enough to win today, but it will be enough next time.