Yesterday, before the show match, snipers from Natus Vincere and Vitality, Alexander "s1mple" Kostylev and Mathieu "ZywOo" Herbaut, gave a brief interview regarding their teams' transition to an international lineup.

Read more about the match results here.

"How did you react to your team transitioning to an international lineup?"

s1mple:

We replaced three players, and now everything is new in the team: different role names, different strategies, different cultures. It's challenging because you need time to start everything from scratch.

                                                                                                                                           

ZywOo:

I was very surprised because we didn't want to change anything, but we needed victories and trophies in tournaments, so we had to go through these reshuffles. It's very challenging for French players to communicate in English within an international lineup, including myself. Initially, I only said "I don't know," but now everything is different.
Transitioning to an international lineup doesn't mean you'll play worse. The biggest challenges were in information processing and effectively communicating what needs to be done to your teammates.

                  

"How do you control your emotions?"

ZywOo:

Of course, sometimes I feel frustrated during games, but I don't want to show my negativity to my teammates and add pressure on them because there are still chances to win. Sometimes there are people who say, "This guy is tilted from the beginning of the game, they will lose," but I try to be myself.

                                

s1mple:

During practice, we try to discuss how significant mistakes we made in the game and try to come to terms with them. I provide examples and explain why something is bad. But sometimes, it's better to discuss such things after practice; I'm still learning.
As ZywOo rightly noted, in official matches, you can't show that you feel defeated, fear, or nervousness. You need to set an example for your teammates so they don't make such mistakes.

                                  

It's worth mentioning that the French organization Vitality made only one change, which was on June 22, 2023, when they announced the signing of Israeli rifler Shahar "flameZ" Shushan from OG, replacing 30-year-old Danish player Peter "dupreeh" Rasmussen.

On the other hand, Natus Vincere made three changes. The team's lineup no longer includes Andrey "npl" Kukharskiy, Denis "electroNic" Sharipov, and Ilya "Perfecto" Zalutskiy, and they were replaced by Aleksi "Aleksib" Virolainen, Justinas "jL" Lekavicius, and Ivan "iM" Mikhaylov.

Yesterday, at the same show match organized by GG.BET, we saw the new lineups of these teams in action for the first time. According to the statistics for the entire show match, s1mple outperformed ZywOo, although Alexander was not on top in terms of rating among his new teammates.