Falcons failed to reach the Esports World Cup final in their organization’s home event, but beat Vitality to secure third place. AWPer Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov called the match the best Falcons have played, giving the roster a confidence boost and clear areas to work on ahead of upcoming events.
Falcons may have failed to make it to the grand final for a shot at the trophy in their organization’s home event, but they did manage to end their Esports World Cup campaign in positive fashion, thanks to a triumph over Falcons in the third-place decider against Vitality.
“We played a completely different game than yesterday.” Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov said when reflecting on his team’s performance. “We wanted to win against them. We wanted to show our S-tier game.”
The Russian AWPer sat down with HLTV after securing third place at Esports World Cup to discuss his team’s performance and what they will be working on moving forward.
Listen to the interview here.
You dominated Vitality on two maps and must be happy after that.
We are happy with the win, but mostly we are happy with the way we played, because I think today was a big contrast compared to yesterday’s game. I think we’re happy more with the way we played.
Why do you think there was a difference today from yesterday?
I’ll just say that today we were taking more risks and playing more free, maybe because there it’s a less pressure game and yesterday it was a high pressure game. I don’t know, but I just didn’t feel that today that anyone had pressure, and we played a completely different game than yesterday.
I just didn’t feel that today that anyone had pressure, and we played a completely different game than yesterday.
Was it nice to have this third-place decider because it means you can end the tournament on a high, rather than the disappointment of yesterday?
Yes, 100%, absolutely. Also because we played against Vitality today, it was some revenge time, you know? We have not beat them yet until today, and we wanted to win against them. We wanted to show our S-tier game.
Is this important for the confidence in the team, a win like this?
Yes, 100%. Finishing the tournament on this note is important. I can just say that if we continue playing like this we can beat a lot of teams, good teams, because today we showed the best game we have ever played in Falcons, in my opinion and the opinion of our players.
If we continue playing like this we can beat a lot of teams, good teams.
Moving forwards, what are Falcons going to work on for the next tournament, so you can keep up this level of play?
I think first of all where we can activate players more. Also we need to review this game that we played against Vitality because I would say that on Inferno it was not bad, even though this map hurts for us recently. I just think that we can activate our players more, play a bit more free to not get stuck in situations, to not lose situations that we usually lose, like 1v3, 1v4, ninja defuse maybe. This is basic for Falcons but we need to work on it. We just need to play better as a team and individually as well.
