xertioN: "We all collapsed"

MOUZ's rifler is worried about the team's energy level after several weeks on the road.

MOUZ had the chance for revenge against Spirit, the team that beat them in the IEM Cologne grand final, after Danil "⁠donk⁠" Kryshkovets and company picked them in the BLAST Bounty semi-final draft. It wasn't to be, however, as a match reminiscent of the championship game in Germany played out in Malta.

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Dorian "⁠xertioN⁠" Berman believes everyone on the team shares some share of the blame, and is worried that the energy levels are low as they have been on the road for nearly a month, linking IEM Cologne with a bootcamp and then flying straight to Malta.

"For us it'll be about having some good talks and figuring out how to get more energy out of everyone because at the moment we have none," he said. An energy they will need to find quickly, as they are slated to start their run at EWC on Wednesday, August 20.

Listen to the interview here.

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Going into this series against Spirit so close after the final in Cologne, we had the same maps come through, and it played out similarly. What did you think before the game would go differently, and why couldn't you make that happen?

Coming into the game, we wanted revenge for the Cologne final, which they took from us. To be honest, today everything went wrong. We played much worse than we ever played this season with Lotan [Spinx]. It's just a big disappointment; there are too many details that we fucked up. Strategies that we ran many times, and today we just didn't know how to run them. At some point, everyone made some crucial mistakes that cost us rounds, so yeah, just super sad at the moment with how we played more than the result itself.

Do you think you were in your heads? Did you put pressure on yourselves to show that you could do better than in that Cologne grand final?

It's tough to say, to pinpoint it to something specific, but I think that the number of days we're away from home at the moment... Especially after losing the Cologne final. We didn't have any time to rest at all. We had a bootcamp after Cologne, and that took away some of our energy. Here in the game, I think it showed.

It was not about mentality or how we came into the game or preparation. We just didn't have any fire in us. The players, all of us, are a bit cooked at the moment. We need to figure out a way to get back in EWC. We have it coming just a couple of days from now, so the goal for now is just to focus on that and try our best to regain our energy because today we really had none.

In Ancient, there was a little burst of energy at the end. You won the pistol round and lost seven in a row, but then managed to get it into overtime. Why couldn't you keep going in OT and turn the map around?

To be honest, I'm not really sure how we got to overtime. I think that we were playing terribly on Ancient, and it also showed on Mirage — the difference in level at the moment, today. We were just not ready to play such a good team as Spirit with the momentum they have. They have won the last nine BO3s, and we're not at that point yet. I think that our level is capable of beating them, but with the fire we had in us today, we couldn't.

I was a bit surprised we even made it to overtime in that moment because, of course I believe it in the game, but after the game you can see just how many mistakes we were making and I think that we were a bit lucky to even get it into overtime with Jimi's clutch — he was 1 HP, so it was good for him —, but I think that at the moment we're just not good enough in terms of the energy.

You said that you need to reset for EWC, which is coming quickly. How do you do that? How do you flip that switch and get yourself ready for the next tournament?

Well, of course at the moment it may seem like the end of the world, we played a terrible best-of-threes, we're out in the semis and we want to start winning trophies, even it's small ones like here, for example, but yeah, for us it'll be about having some good talks and figuring out how to get more energy out of everyone because at the moment we have none. I think it will be tough to go into EWC with the same current form we have at the moment.

When you go sit with the team now and review, do you have anything in your mind that you want to say? Something you want to bring up?

No, it will stay private, the mistakes that happened, but I think that everyone at some point today can take responsibility for how we played. No one can say that they played well; just too much unfocusedness. We didn't listen to each other in this game, and that never happened before, so it just collapsed. We all collapsed at the moment, and I think it's just a shame, and we have to move on from it.

One last question. zweih really came online today and had a good game. Did you talk at all about trying to abuse him or zont1x with the rumors surrounding him, and that not working out?

Not at all, but either way, if we had, we would have gotten smashed today. We got absolutely stomped by them, and nothing that we tried to do worked, and everything we did was not correct, so I think that there's just a lot to evaluate individually for players about how we played some rounds, because I think it was not about the calling. It's a shame we're out this way, but it is what it is.