Vitality may have failed to win an event in the first half of the year, but they were in fine form as they took down FaZe in three maps to advance to the playoffs here at IEM Cologne 2024. 

After the game, we spoke to mezii about the mental battle of dealing with FaZe, the first half of the year, and dealing with losses.

Interview was taken and written by Sam "AN1MO" McKenzie

You've made it to the LANXESS, how are you feeling?

I'm feeling good, it's the first time for me and it's Cologne man, everyone wants to make it to the arena and everyone wants to go far. 

After this game, it's even sweeter because it was a tough game, very stressful, back and forth and going to the third map, anything could have happened, so I'm just happy we made it through. 

Was the LANXESS one of the arenas you were always dreaming of?

For sure, even when I first started playing CS, I saw so many iconic moments at the LANXESS and so many big wins, it's one of those places you have to play in if you're a professional. You really want to be there, play there, and hopefully win there.

How much of a mental battle was that game?

It was tough, especially after the first map, it was the same story against FaZe on Inferno where we let rounds slip too much and lost an eco round that put our economy in a bad way. 

We always know the answers, but sometimes we just mess up, we threw a weird 4v2 towards the end. So, I think Inferno was just a bit of a mess.

We then got to Dust2 where we were calmer, but they're a team that can make comebacks, they're never out of the game, and it's always tough. 

To put away a team like FaZe, it's always going to be hard. Doing it now, it feels good, and going to that third map, we were always confident and knew that we just needed to keep giving as much energy as we could.

We know we need to want it more than any other team, that's what's going to get us through, and today it definitely worked.

BLAST.tv put out an interview with flameZ today in which he spoke about how the games against FaZe at the end of 2023 were very comfortable but this year you have struggled against them, why do you think today was different?

I think as well, they're also going through a rougher period. They may not be on the highest of confidence, and that always plays a factor.

But for us, we're just in a moment right now where we really trust in the process and have a lot of faith in the practice we're putting in. Our preparation has been really good coming back from the player break, all this work that we put in wasn't just for EWC at the start, it was for Cologne and for the Major at the end of the year, too. 

We've really been grinding as individuals and as a team, so going into this match, we were going in confident because we know how much we want it as a team and how hard we've been working. We just need to keep reminding ourselves of that and that's why it worked out well today.

You didn't manage to pick up any trophies in the first half of the year, do you think that was just a case of the honeymoon period being over you needed to work through the things that hadn't been so obvious when you first joined?

I would definitely say that at the start of the year with IEM Katowice. 

We were the best team in the world at the time, and it was a bit different because FaZe were going through the change where they brought in frozen and so on, but I think at Kato, even though we prepared and did our usual stuff, we were the best team in the world so teams were going to come back at us even harder and maybe we weren't fully ready for that.

Going throughout the rest of the year, I would say we were still in good shape. We made it to a couple of finals and at Dallas we definitely could have, and should have won, but overall, we were so close to finals and it was just a few mistakes that we've put in a lot of time over the break to make adjustments for. 

In those finals and big games, it's those small details that close out the games and against the best teams, they really exploit them. It's always tough in those games, but we've made a lot of adjustments and added new things to try to combat these losses.

Now that you've had the break and are well into the new season, how are you looking back on that first season and the losses?

It was tough losing finals and being so close but not winning. Under an organisation like Vitality, we want to be winning these tournaments and the team and players are used to winning. 

At the time, it was pretty tough and disappointing to lose, but when we look back on it, if we come to Cologne and win or win a Major, we're going to forget about those losses.

At the same time, we can still be positive about our performances. We were pretty consistent and making a lot of deep runs. Of course, we didn't go the extra step to win them, but we know we can go that far and that we just need that extra little bit to take it over the line and that's why I feel very confident here.