apEX: "Some Vitality fans say it's been a disaster for three months; I think they've been eating too well"

"That's what we give them, too good food, and now they're not happy about anything," the French captain added.

Vitality returned from a month-long break in shaky form, dropping their ESL Pro League opener to rival French organization Gentle Mates in a loss that Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire admits stung for Vitality's fans.

"People were a bit crazy on socials," he tells HLTV after Vitality beat GamerLegion on day two. "I feel like they would have preferred us losing the Major final to The MongolZ than losing this game, but that's CS. I'm sad because I didn't want to lose for the club, but what I know is we gave our best for the game and we were just not ready."

Read more

Gentle Mates upset Vitality in EPL S22 Stage 2

The Austin Major champions are still on the hunt for a title in the Fall season after a nigh-unstoppable run in the first half of the year, during which they won seven titles and 37 series in a row.

apEX spoke about Vitality's struggles since the break, admitting that the team felt the summer break was short and they didn't prepare well for the first four events afterward, but pushed back at fans who have reacted poorly to their early results.

"Our personal goal is to win one trophy before the Major to get some confidence back, to be able to do the back-to-back win, and that's what we expect," he says. "And as I said, yeah, everyone else is getting a bit crazy about us, like, 'they're finished, it's GG,' whatever. Yeah, for sure we're not winning and we want to win, but you have only one winner at the end of the tournament and you have 15 losers."

You can listen to the interview here.

---

Congrats, 1-1, almost a 13-0 as well. A much better look than yesterday, how are you feeling after that? I know yesterday you said you're 'losing to noobies' or something, so a bit better today, obviously.

Yeah, I think yesterday was a tough game. We played pretty bad while they played good. They probably played almost at their best. That's kinda the same game we played against Legacy at the Major, where we entered the competition later and we're not ready to fight yet, when we play a bit of a lower-ranked opponent. I think that was the main reason why we played that bad.

We tried to give our best today and say, 'Just show up, even though we play against a lower-ranked team we need to show up, we need to show emotions, have good communication, play for the team,' et cetera. Today was a good example of how we can react to playing one of the worst games of the season to one of the best. We lost four rounds today and I'm proud of that.

So yeah, for us, it's focusing on us most of the time. We've been inconsistent for sure, but it's the first time in the season that we lose in a best-of-three to a really lower-ranked team. That's tough for a Vitality fan because it's a big rivalry in France, and people were a bit crazy on socials. I feel like they would have preferred us losing the Major final to The MongolZ than losing this game, but that's CS. I'm sad because I didn't want to lose for the club, but what I know is we gave our best for the game and we were just not ready.

I asked mopoz about the rivalry a bit, but obviously I don't think he is embedded in the French part of the scene as much. He still said they maybe showed who is the best baguette or something, how did you feel about that?

I will answer something, that I'm looking for an HLTV profile and I've never seen a trophy yet, so let's wait a bit for that (smiles). You know, you need to be humble in life — I'm not humble right now because I answer to what they say — but they've been playing good, and they've been playing better and better, and it's good to see that. They're showing some progress et cetera, but let's been humble.

You didn't win a tournament, you beat us. It's nice, and you maybe beat us in the future, but try to be humble. It's important in CS, I can tell you that. Even though I won a lot, the most important thing for me is to be humble because if you are, you can keep winning and keep giving your best all the time.

Read more

mopoz on Vitality-M8s rivalry: "Maybe today we showed who's the best baguette"

Obviously this is a Spanish roster, but it's a French organization. Is it nice to see this influx with another French organization coming in? We had French CS struggling for a while, but now we have 3DMAX, we have Gentle Mates coming into the space as an org. Do you see French CS improving because of this?

Of course. Not because of the Spanish lineup, but because of the owners of M8. They have one of the biggest YouTubers in France, almost 20 million subscribers, and one of the best streamers in France. And they have another guy who's pretty known as well, so of course, this creates an audience, and that's what we lacked in France, in a way.

They have the kind of organization as we used to have with this guy, Gotaga. They're just really known, so people just follow them. Whatever they will do, If they will play Age of Empires, I think it's what they do actually, but they'll follow because they're just following the org.

Overall for the French scene, it's really good. And I actually sent a message to the guy, even though maybe Vitality fans will not be happy about it, but I actually said to M8 that it's nice they come to CS because it's going to help CS grow in France. It will grow and help everyone, so it's really good and I hope it will keep growing and they will keep doing their best.

Talking about Vitality, the first half of your year was amazing. The second half, you've still made playoffs, but second at BLAST London, fourth at EWC, it's not the championships we saw at the start of the year. We're at EPL now, it's a studio event, but we're ramping into the second half of this season. How do you feel the conversation is unfolding about Vitality, internally and externally?

In a way, we knew that it would happen, we just didn't know when. The thing is, we went so high in the first part of the year, without losing a best-of-three or best-of-five in six months, I mean... that's crazy. Winning seven events in a row, I don't know when we're going to see that again.

I think what didn't help us was that we felt like the break was short, and we didn't realize and adapt to what happened. Then we had four events in a row, and it fucked our brain. I think we didn't prepare well for those four events at the beginning, and that was the only practice we had for those events. Sometimes maybe a little day and a half or whatever, but real practice. Our preparation wasn't the best and we paid for that.

Then that's what happens after, you lose a bit of confidence and you play worse. But once again, for me, I see some Vitality fans who say it's been a disaster for three months, and I think they've been eating too well. That's what we give them, too good food, and now they're not happy about anything, about whatever. So yeah, we want to do it, we want to keep fighting. I know the way we prepared and the way we're hungry to win again. But I don't know, you never know when you're going to win again, but at least we're competitive.

I would like a bit, like in the G2 game we probably should have won it, I don't know if we were the better team but we had good situations and we fucked them up. And that's life. The other two we lost to MOUZ in Cologne and MongolZ where they played insanely well in two events.

You also need to understand that it's always the same for big champions, sometimes they are tired, like ZywOo played worse than before, I played way worse than the first part of the season, and flameZ had a tough tournament at the beginning. It's competition and we just want to work hard again to get there, but it's not that easy. It's not like a click and you come back to your old level. We're working, hopefully it's going to come soon.

Our personal goal is to win one trophy before the Major to get some confidence back, to be able to do the back-to-back win, and that's what we expect. And as I said, yeah, everyone else is getting a bit crazy about us, like, 'they're finished, it's GG,' whatever. Yeah, for sure we're not winning and we want to win, but you have only one winner at the end of the tournament and you have 15 losers.

During the first half of the season, you... I wouldn't say you were tempering expectations, but the way you were talking about the streak and winning trophies, you were really upfront. You knew it would have to end at some point, you weren't caring about it. Coming out of that, do you feel like you did a good job in terms of how you set that expectation?

Yes, of course we did. And we didn't talk about it, we just didn't care about the winstreak. What's most impressive is not the game winstreak itself, it's the tournament winstreak for me, like winning seven in a row.

My role was to push my teammates, to tell them, 'Let's play even more, let's work hard because people will want to kill us,' et cetera, and we gave so much in the first part of the season that now it's a bit harder, I think. I feel some of my players, and me sometimes, we're a bit more tired and we don't give this extra 5%, what we did before. That's what made us play worse and be less good individually.

I just expect us to get back to a really good level because it was fun to win that, but if it's the first time in history that it happens, there is a reason: that it's tough to do. So yeah, we'll try our best, hopefully it's going to come back and maybe not win that much, but win again because as I said, I miss it.

I also wanted to touch on the Major and the way invites have shaped up. There's been a lot of conversation around the VRS and how all these tournaments and small LAN tournaments are affecting things. You just made a face when I said that, do you have any general thoughts, what's going through your head?

What's tough with the VRS is that it's so up and down. I think we're sixth right now? Maybe went back to fifth? Before the game, we were sixth with your live ranking because of MOUZ, who were behind us, as they won they went above. Like... I don't think we deserve sixth (laughs), with what we did in the last... just because we didn't do FISSURE and we lost three semis and one final, I think even more that's crazy. What doesn't help is that people after that is they have the instant culture, if you know what I mean, like people just think about the last one month, or the last two weeks-

Like reaction culture.

Yeah, like, 'Top six? Oh, they're washed.' But did we deserve to be washed like that? Did we deserve to be top six? Of course we lost yesterday and we lost a lot of points, but this ranking is crazy. That's why I looked up at the HLTV ranking and I felt like we were top one for a long time, so I was feeling good (laughs).

In the way that shaped up, maybe not at the top end but with these last few Major invites with all these little LANs playing out. There's been a lot of conversation around the Fragdelphias, Birch Cup, Riga Open, and so on. As someone who was around when a lot. more of these events were happening, are you happy to see them back?

I think it's good, it's just the glitch of LANs winning so many points is tough. I don't think it's the best, but it's a good way to do stuff and it's nice to have small LANs having impact again, in the VRS and everything. It's fun to see that. Like today, it's an RMR at Fragadelphia, like the winner is getting the Major, except OG or...?

Whoever wins Fragdelphia gets the last spot, yeah.

The problem is also for the people who try to count, like what's going on, it's almost impossible. Even experts, I think I saw experts-"ish" saying that OG can't qualify anymore, but they still can, it's crazy though.

Having a ranking like tennis a bit more would be nice, I mean in tennis if you lose, you're out, so it's a bit different, but imagine for us that if you go 3-2 and win the event, you might not win that many points. And also the maximum number of points, like when we used to be first and didn't lose, we lost points when we won a game. There are some problems for sure in that, so hopefully they will manage to change things, it's important for the good of everything. Let's see how it goes.

Tomorrow the Major invite list will be set, it's the last day, the ranking, everyone has been waiting for it. How do you feel that's shaped up with how long this process has carried on?

Everyone knew that today is the last day, and it's just crazy to see teams fighting left and right for it. I'm not sure it's a good system, once again, I think it creates so much stuff where you see people withdrawing from one LAN to go to another.

Like Gentle Mates. Unfortunately for them, unfortunately for France, they didn't qualify, but the fact that they could come here and maybe qualify because someone... I dont like it. It's too unpredictable and too tough for other teams. But once again it's Valve and I'm not sure they will change anything, so let's see.

Lastly, coming back to EPL, you're 1-1 now. You have Falcons playing really well this event, you have MOUZ looking better, it feels like it's going to be really competitive going into the playoffs. How do you feel about Vitality's odds?

Well, let's see. It's the beginning of the tournament. What I always say to my teammates is I prefer getting better in playoffs than in the group stage. A lot of events we started- like EPL in the first season, we almost lost MIBR in the first game and finished winning the event, so for me it's just about being on top at the right moment.

That's tough, but it's what's needed, getting better after each game. And as we didn't do an event for one month, we're a bit rusty, and people got used to it. When you look at Gentle Mates, they played maybe 10 days of events in a row, whereas we didn't play one, so of course we had to slap our face and come back to it. If we get better and better after each game it's going to be great, and we might have a shot to win. Because as I said, I want to win, either here, maybe Hong Kong if we go there, or Chengdu. It's a big thing to be able to win one of those to be able to be there for the Major. I know this extra confidence will help.