On May 4, 2024, the Ukrainian organisation Monte won a crucial match against the Russian team FORZE at ESL Pro League Season 19. The match was so intense that a total of 75 rounds were played over three maps. Following such a success for the Ukrainian team, we took an interview with the team's coach, Sergey LMBT Bejanov, where he answered some interesting questions.

It's worth noting that Monte defeated FORZE with a score of 2:1 (Nuke 13:11, Mirage 10:13, Ancient 16:12), a detail that will be relevant shortly.

We started, of course, with the man who has been very loud both online and in the studio during the tournament, British sniper Owen smooya Butterfield. Throughout the tournament, the Brit has been playing as a stand-in for the team FORZE.

Remember, after the previous match against Monte, where FORZE also lost, smooya wrote "Slava Ukraini" on his Twitter, which nearly got him kicked out of the team, but he managed to resolve the situation. For a detailed story of this event, see here.

From LMBT, we simply learned whether the team had communicated with smooya during the tournament, to which we received the following reply:

He is a known successful person in the world of esports and all this play in social media is part of his success, and if they did communicate behind the scenes, it is still private.

The second map of today's confrontation was Mirage, just as last time. Here, the British player from FACEIT really stepped up and hit everything that could possibly be hit. Clearly, a son of Mirage. In general, on Mirage, smooya single-handedly defeated the entire Monte team. Here's how LMBT reacted:

He hit just as well in the first match and took a bunch of clutches, we were leading this time too, but unfortunately, we gave away a very crucial 4v2 round. It happens.

Monte’s Gameplay Style

Attentive viewers might have noticed that Monte often plays around the Heaven area on the Nuke map, coming there both from Outside and from Ramp. We noticed this too and asked LMBT how difficult it is for their opponents to play this map against them. Here’s the response:

Nuke is a map where any team in the world has the longest playbook. Therefore, it’s very hard to adjust to anything there. You either choose the right game plan or not. Overall, the game just unfolded in such a way that this direction was the most successful…

Monte’s Upcoming Games at EPL Season 19

Monte is currently in the finals of the last chance bracket, where they will compete against the winner of the match between FURIA and ENCE. If they win this match, the Ukrainian organisation will move to the playoffs of the championship, but if they lose, they will go home.

We were curious about who Monte considers their best opponent, to which LMBT replied:

It doesn’t matter who we play against. It’s a playoff match, just like last year. All the teams in our group are playing very poorly except for MOUZ. So, the one who is more focused on that day will win.

Monte will play their next match tomorrow at 14:30. Their Group C bracket is as follows: