MAJ3R on last two months: "I felt like my players were not very confident when I was calling"

The Turkish captain was cautiously optimistic but didn't want to get ahead of himself after Aurora trounced GamerLegion in Bucharest.

Aurora reached their third LAN final of 2025 after a complete drubbing of GamerLegion in the semi-finals of PGL Masters Bucharest, becoming just the seventh team in "relevant events" since CS:GO started to hold the losing team to just two rounds or less.

It was an emphatic win for a squad that has been struggling with inconsistency in recent months, with even their run in Romania being labored after they went up 2-0 in the Swiss group stage but needed all three tries to get the job done.

"Nowadays, Counter-Strike is about confidence," Engin "⁠MAJ3R⁠" Küpeli told HLTV after the dominant win over GamerLegion. "And I think my team, my teammates, and maybe myself, were not that confident in the beginning of the tournament because it was very rough — we had a lot of complicated matches."

The Turkish in-game leader also spoke about his post on X, where he stated the team was in its "biggest crisis" so far, and how he hopes this win can be a building block for the future.

"Today was a good day for us, but we shouldn’t forget that we’ve been struggling for two months," he said. "Today was a good example, and, hopefully, we can bounce off of this victory and gain a lot of confidence for the next matches."

You can watch the interview here.

Congratulations, you just made it to the grand final of PGL Masters Bucharest. I’ll just say it — what a showstopping performance against GamerLegion that was. You looked like a completely different team, and played one of the quickest semi-finals we’ve ever seen. What changed between the last games and this one?

First of all, hello everyone. Yeah, it was a good day, a good match against them. I think everything was in our favor today, but not in the first match — the first match was very close. But now, against GamerLegion, we had a lot of what we showed early in the year, and if we can show that tomorrow, I’m confident.

What changed after that second map against B8? It felt like you picked up that form on Overpass in that game and never let go. How can a team look so different between the first couple of days of an event and the playoffs?

You know, nowadays Counter-Strike is about confidence. And I think my team, my teammates, and maybe myself, were not that confident in the beginning of the tournament because it was very rough — we had a lot of complicated matches. And with confidence and headshots — this is the game against GamerLegion, I think we gave them two rounds in two maps. So yeah, I’m very happy about my boys, and like I told you — hopefully, we can show the same face tomorrow.

After losing those two games in the group stage, you said, ‘We are in our biggest crisis as a team so far.' How did you handle it, and what exactly did you mean with these words?

When I tweeted about our biggest crisis, it wasn’t about the results that we had in this tournament, but about the general situation during the last two months. I felt like my players were not very confident when I was calling. Normally, at the beginning of the year, you just 'Ferrari peek,' and now there was a little bit of ‘s-d, s-d,’ you know? Not going straight up.

Today was a good day for us, but we shouldn’t forget that we’ve been struggling for two months. Today was a good example, and, hopefully, we can bounce off of this victory and gain a lot of confidence for the next matches.

At the start of the tournament, you were the big favorite to win the event. It feels like you lost that for a bit, but do you feel like you’ve regained that status now? Are you going to lift the trophy?

Yeah, I’ll let people decide on that [the status], but if we play like today, we are going to win for sure. Yeah.