GuardiaN: "We are going for the title!"

We caught up with Ladislav "GuardiaN" Kovács from myDGB.net before his team's trip to Poland to talk about various subjects, including their rise to fame, preparations and expectations for this event and more.

Slovakian-Czech squad that plays for Serbian organization myDGB.net made a name for themselves back in December with a 3rd place finish at AMD Sapphire CS:GO Invitational. Since then we haven't seen them much, but they managed to win the international qualifier for a tournament dubbed Your road to Katowice, which will be held this weekend as an independent part of IEM's Polish stop.

With only a day remaining before the event's start, we decided to contact the team's captain and best player Ladislav "GuardiaN" Kovács. We talked to him about various topics, including their rise to fame in Prague, preparations and expectations for the Polish event, potential clash with ESC, as well as future plans.

Without further ado, here is the interview:

Although your team was far from being unknown at the time, your 3rd place at AMD Sapphire still came as a surprise to most people, seeing as that was your first international tournament in CS:GO. Did you expect that you would be able to finish in the top 3 and that your team would perform so well?

At the beginning we were really underrated due to online pracces or online matches. For me, it is known that we are not that good online like at lan. Our real strength is at lan, the team spirit. I really expected our finish in the top3 thanks to our hard practice before the lan (about 5-6 hours a day cca).

The attendance list was not that strong in my opinion, the only real opponents were NiP and team VeryGames for us. But I really knew that VG are playable, that we can make a big damage to them and it has happened.

That was a particular shock for everyone, when you beat VeryGames in the group stage 16-12 on de_nuke_ve. Even though the French knocked you out later in the semi-final, you still remain to this day the only team besides NiP to defeat the world's number two. What exactly went right back then and is it something that we should expect to happen again in the future?

This game was completely a dream game for us. The first game at international lan in CS:GO for us and everything was perfect. If I would talk about the IN-game, I would say it was everything just perfect.  We made some mistakes, but we were still able to beat them and take the first important win home.

Unfortunately in the second match we were unable to beat them, in the semi-finals. The main reason why we lost were the eco rounds we lost to them. We lost like 3-4 eco rounds and it makes about 6-7 free rounds to them (they forced us to eco). Mistakes are part of the competitive CS, noone is perfect.

I hope we will beat them in the future events, I really believe in my team.

myDGB.net with the 3rd place cheque in Prague

Besides that event, we were only able to see you in ESL Major Series, as the other two big online leagues (ESEA and SLTV StarSeries) didn't invite you to participate. Do you wish you had the chance to play those and would you prefer to be included in such leagues in the future, or is it fine with you to just focus on LAN tournaments?

After the Heaven media lan I was really pissed off a little bit that we were not invited. But right now,  I am quite okay with it. We changed our roster and we need to practice instead of playing officials. We mainly focus on lans and not on online leagues and to be honest, I've never won anything online so I do not really care about it.

Your EMS participation ended abruptly with a loss to gamed!de in the first stage of the playoffs. Considering that match took place after Prague and that the expectations were much higher, it was a disappointing loss. A couple of weeks later the news appeared about Tomáš "oskar" Šťastný leaving the team. Can you tell us your side of the story about what happened in that period, with the loss in EMS and oskar's departure?

I do not really want to talk about oskar's departure. Both sides have failed. A lot of people think that aim and frags are enough for success, but they are out of reality. The whole game is about the team and not about one player and he was not the best in our team so far.

You found a replacement rather quickly in form of your ex-teammate from Reason Gaming, Marek ".PhP" Kadek. To us who come from the CS 1.6 scene, that is not a very familiar name, but from what the reports say, he was quite an impactful player back in the day. Can you tell us a bit more about his history, and more importantly about what we can expect from him in the new game and what you expect from him to do for the team?

Well, Marek is a nice person and one of the best CS:S riflers in the history of this game. He taught me a lot, mainly the secrets of team spirit and CS:S. I do not remember if anyone was able to compete him aim wise, probably the only one who could challenge him was RpK (nowadays ex player of team VeryGames). In 2008 he was voted as the best rifle player of year 2008 and a year later he was voted as the best player of year 2009 and that's enough for everyone to make their own opinion.

I can not tell you if you can expect a lot from him, it's gonna be his first event after 1.5 years of "inactivity" and sure, in a new game. But I am quite sure, he will be our carry at the IEM Poland besides me. He still needs a few weeks to improve his game sense, but he is already at the top level!

Hopefully you've seen our monthly team rankings by now, and the December edition featured your team at quite a high spot. With the biggest climb of +26 places and as the 6th best team in the month you've certainly made a name for yourselves. Currently ranked as 9th in the world, do you think that is an adequate placement and how much higher do you plan on going? Are there any teams above you in particular that you wish to leap over?

Well, I am fine with this ranking. But I do not really care about any rankings, it does not make the team better. Yes, it would be nice to be in top3, but the time will show us who deserves the spot in top3 and who doesn't. Next couple of events will show us how good who is. I really miss team NaVi in this ranking, I hope they will attend an event soon.

GuardiaN (on the left) prior to his clash with hooch's dAT team

Moving on to a more current topic, you will be traveling to Katowice, Poland this weekend to take part in a four team event with a $7,000 prize purse. What are your expectations and how have you prepared for that tournament?

Our expectations are really high, we are going for the title for sure! We were able to practice only 7 days if I'm right, probably more or less I do not really remember. I do not think that it was the best preparation we had, but I feel like we are 100% prepared for this event. The main goal for us is to not let ESC win and if we will be the short handed against them, then we will not let them win so easily. It will be a great match!

In the eyes of the public you will not be the favorites in case it comes to that expected final between you and ESC as they are coming off a win in Kiev, are ranked 3rd in the world and they will be playing in front of their fans. What will you have to do or not do in order to beat them? Have you followed their recent matches, analyzed their play?

We haven't been anaylizing their strats or games, we had no time for anything like this. We focused everything on our strats, our tactics and our game, teamplay. We will do our best to make everything perfect and make them lose to us, as I mentioned earlier, it's gonna be a great match. We do not know what we can expect from them, but they do not know as well what can they expect from us.

The only thing I know is that they will not underestimate us and they will play on 110% against us and for sure, we will have to play on 111% to beat them.

The tournament will use single elimination best-of-three format and all matches will be played in one day. What do you think about this format considering it's such a small number of teams in attendance?

Well, I am not that happy to play only 2 matches at an event like this. I would prefer to play groups and then SE BO3 system. But that's the choice of the admins, so we have to accept it.

After the Polish event, the next international tournaments are Esports Heaven Vienna at the end of February and Copenhagen Games at the end of March. What are the odds that we will see you at both of those and what do you have in plan generally for the future?

Yes, you will definitely see us at both of the events and we really are looking forward to these events. We will practice much more to be more prepared to show our full strength and beat the number one team in the world!

Lastly, we cannot miss the opportunity to touch up on the subject of the AWP. With you being one of the world's premier players with the big green, which other individuals have earned your respect in that regard and who do you look forward to dueling with the most in the near future?

The player, the awper I most respect is the one and only Rattlesnake. I battled him a lot of times at lan, lost probably once to his team, but he amazed me everytime I have played him. In the future I would like to face the two great awpers from CS 1.6, markeloff and Friis.

Any final words?

I would like to thank myDGB for their support at each event, to our two main sponsors Razer and CKRAS for improving our team play game by game and for raising our motivation, thanks a lot once again! And thanks to you for that little pre-lan interview. Cheer for us guys!

The "Your road to Katowice" tournament is scheduled to start on Sunday, January 20th at 12:00 with the first semi-final between ESC and MaxFloPlay. myDGB.net should go into action at 14:30 against ALSEN.

There will be no public GOTV for this tournament, only streams in various languages, but HLTV.org will of course provide complete coverage including stream links, match reports, demos and statistics.