kyxsan: "We made sure m0NESY understood that he still has this freedom from before"

Falcons' IGL says that the Russian sniper is bringing back his old form.

Falcons put together a near-flawless 3-0 group stage to become the second team to progress to the ESL Pro League S22 playoffs.

Despite that, however, Damjan "⁠kyxsan⁠" Stoilkovski says the team has a lot of improvements to make, especially when it comes to communication in advantageous situations, which continues to be an issue for Falcons.

"Sometimes, everyone tries to make a plan or tries to say something, and when three people are talking on top of each other, it's not easy to play," he said about the problem.

He also spoke about Falcons' games at EPL so far, Maxim "⁠kyousuke⁠" Lukin's improvement, and Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov's return to form.

Listen to the interview here.

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kyxsan, congratulations, through to the playoffs. I heard you at the end there, talking about how you got seven kills in two maps but still won, so you must be feeling good about that part at least, right?

Yeah, I mean it feels good. It was not the best day for me individually, but now that we won, it's a bit easier to forget what happened on Inferno at least (smiles). Yeah, it was a good day.

Are you going to watch the fragmovie that comes out?

I was actually about to tweet it, that I'm looking forward to seeing this because I know it will happen (laughs).

Still, it's a good result for you, through to the playoffs without dropping a series. A bit of a mark of success for this roster as you continue to bed in kyousuke, so how does it feel to get through cleanly?

It feels good. Since we brought kyousuke we've been practice a lot and trying to improve, and every next event we play, we feel the improvement. That's the most important thing for us, that we feel more comfortable, more confident, and we can just see that we're on the right path.

I don't think we've talked to you since you brought him in. How has he changed the way you've been calling, has it made a big difference for you?

There is a little bit of a change, for sure. He has a lot of good positions, so obviously he is sometimes calling some things, but I would still say that he is not very experienced, so he doesn't call as much as NiKo called when he was in these positions. So we're trying to help him in every possible way, to come up with some ideas and change up some things in the game because he's not that experienced, and if we don't tell him then he might just keep doing the same things over and over again. That's why we're here and trying to make him even better.

He does still lack experience, but a lot of you don't. And we're still seeing a lot of those rounds where you're losing 5v2s or 5v3s. Can you tell me what you're working on when you go back and look at some of these issues, because it's becoming quite a recurring topic whenever Falcons play.

Yeah, it's been an issue that we've had for a few months, let's say, or even more. The biggest problem for this is that sometimes our communication is not the calmest, let's say. So in these situations, sometimes everyone tries to make a plan or tries to say something, and when three people are talking on top of each other, it's not easy to play. We're trying to work on our communication and trying to follow one plan, and that way everything will be calmer and we can make better decisions and finish these rounds.

We had Vitality lose a series, Spirit made it through earlier, and MOUZ who've lost to you now. It's shaping up to be a very competitive playoffs, especially with teams having some time off before the event, so how are you feeling about Falcons going into the playoffs? Is this where you get that title?

We feel confident. As I said, the most important thing for us is that we feel like we're improving, and that brings us a lot of confidence. Obviously this event is stacked, like all the best teams are here, there's not even a single team missing. So it will be an interesting playoffs, I think we already proved we can play against anyone. We've played against most of the top teams in the last months, and we've lost to some of them and we've beaten some of them, but we proved that we are near that level.

I also wanted to touch on m0NESY's form, it seems like he is back to his best. I know NiKo hinted toward it before this event and it's been a bit of a topic as well. What have you seen from him that's changed that a bit?

He's definitely improving and bringing back his old form. I think the reason why maybe the stats looked a bit different or people thought that he became worse is because we have a lot of good players in the team, and sometimes you cannot make everyone comfortable and happy, let's say. So obviously kyousuke wants to do things, NiKo wants to do things, I'm the IGL, so there's a lot of voices on the team. And maybe at one moment, m0NESY felt like he cannot do too many things, so obviously we had a talk about it and we made sure that he understood that he still has this freedom from before and he can do whatever he wants with the AWP.