seized: GuardiaN’s wedding made us a better team

Na’Vi surprised at ESL One Cologne with a convincing groupstage and a strong victory against G2 Esports in the quarterfinals. escene.de sat down with Denis ’seized‘ Kostin to talk about the preparation, Ladislav ‚GuardiaN‘ Kovacz‘ wedding and the match against G2’s superteam.

escene: First of all, congratulations for beating G2 in the quarterfinal. The results in the recent months have not been as convincing as this tournament. How did you manage to get through this tough time?
Denis ’seized‘ Kostin: Yeah, I missed to be in the semis at a big event. Lately we had bad results because of many aspects like problems in the team or missing preparation because of these problems. Now we are trying to fix all the stuff outside of the game, just play and try to be a team outside the game. These are the main aspects for us now.

You mentioned the stuff outside the game. Your AWPer Ladislav ‚GuardiaN‘ Kovacz got married a week ago. Did the entire Team attend the wedding and how did it affect your preparation for ESL One and the Major? 
To be honest, for us this event is a bootcamp before the major, because we don’t have enough time for practice. We were four days in bootcamp at moscow before ESL One, only with four people without GuardiaN. So the four of us played as much as we could. Then we went home to pack our stuff to go to his wedding two days later. That resulted in two different events: we didn’t play much CS, which is bad. But on the other hand, this wedding made us a better team. It’s not just bootcamping and sitting in front of the computer. We are just having fun together and it pushed our mentality as a team.

The map pick against G2 was quite surprising. You picked Overpass and G2 took Nuke, one of your weaker maps.
I think, the unexpected choice was we picked Overpass and not Train. Nuke was expected from us and them. And we try to improve and play every map. So we have some surprises for the major.

G2 even had a 13:10 lead on nuke. What was the key for your comeback?
We won the most important economic key rounds. There were some rounds in a row and that’s pretty important. Because you get no money if you lose a round after a win. And that’s a good way to make a comeback. We had some good calls in the right time as T-Side.
 
When you look further to the major, what are your expectations for the team?
Our goal is always the same. We want to win. When you reached the finals two times, nothing but the win will satisfy you. Everyone wants to be major winners before the vacation. 

Do you think Na’Vi needs those big events to come back after a hard time? 
I would be fun, if it would turn out like this. But I don’t know.