A comeback on the T side of Mirage and a confidently closed out Inferno was how the second semi-final of ELEAGUE played out, with FaZe booking a date with Astralis in the playoffs.

The Slovakian enjoys the freedom he has in FaZe

After a series prolonged by technical difficulties, we chatted with a jolly Ladislav "⁠GuardiaN⁠" Kovács, who said that FaZe were overzealous in the first map, but figured out stuff on Inferno where they won 16-10.

On Mirage against North, starting with your CT side, it looked a bit shaky, but you ended up winning in the end. How do you feel about how Mirage went, especially the CT side?

I don't really feel good about how we started because we were all, I would say, restless. We all wanted to do something and I think the whole CT side was chaotic and the T side was chaotic as well, but I think we showed a stronger game on the T side. The first map was really chaotic, we were creating some kind of chaos for ourselves.

There was fast information, a lot of information, useless information, overrotations and stuff like that. It was a bad game, Mirage was a very bad game for us, but it happens. We were waiting all day and maybe we got tired before we started the game, then a lot of waiting, pauses... I mean, that happens.

As you said, all the players wanted to create something, is that still an issue for you as a team? Having a lot of playmakers on the side, balancing that out, especially on the CT side?

It's not always like that, this particular Mirage map was that kind of stuff, that everyone wanted to do something and we didn't listen to karrigan a lot of times so I think we created it ourselves because we all know how North is playing Mirage. I mean, they play a very good Mirage T side so they know how to create the chaos on the map and that played a big role as well. I think it just started and everyone wanted to be the superstar to win the map and we just created the problems ourselves. But yeah, North played very well and we had some key moments that decided that we won Mirage.

In general, it sounds like you were pretty confident going into this matchup. How was the feeling, playing against North, considering all the results you had?

There are many factors, in term of skill and talent we are very confident against any team in the world, in terms of map picks I think it was very hard to pick which map they should play against us. Because I think Mirage, Overpass, and Inferno are our best maps and they had to choose Mirage or Train, but they chose Mirage.

It was a very hard matchup for them, because if we lose Mirage we still have Inferno and Train, and they don't really know how we play Train because we played only one online game against NiP. I think it would be a risky move for them to play the third map because they don't know anything about us and we knew a lot because we checked how they played Train. I think in term of the map pool we were the winners.

Tell me about Inferno then. From the outside, it seemed like you were in control for the most of the map, even though they got 10 rounds it didn't look that scary. How was it on the inside of the team, was it the same thing?

Inferno is the map that we are the most confident on and most comfortable, especially on T side, because we are confident to peek and play on contact and open the sites. Any of the players can do it. I mean, it was 5-1 when they won the key round, they won an eco with a saved AWP, when we did a long rush to A. We just failed, everyone went one by one, we got caught off... I think we were in control of the T side, I mean, we had a lot of tactics that we could use but we didn't use. The whole T side was more about duels.

Talking about you personally, on Inferno you had that one great round with AWP and you were playing pretty good in general. How does it feel for you, since you had an up and down period, the whole 2016 more or less with Na`Vi and now doing pretty good again?

For me it feels more like I don't have any pressure on my shoulders, I can do whatever I want and I know that my teammates will, even if I die without killing anyone, cover that mistake, or issue, or bad luck, or something. I always know that my teammates are behind me and I can freely feel the game and say "I want to go there". Like I did on the CT side against North now, I just said, "guys, I'll go banana through the molly and I will kill the guy". And I killed him. So I feel more open and because I'm more open and nobody is pressuring me from all the sides I can do whatever I want. It's more fun for me to play CS again.

In general, k0nfig has been playing very, very well, but in this series, we didn't see that much from him. What is your take on that, is there anything special you did to shut him down?

We don't do that kind of thing that we are shutting down some star fragger or something. I mean, I think Mirage was that close because k0nfig was getting a lot of opening kills, a lot of important kills and I think that on Mirage, he was showing that he is one of the best players in the world and that he has the skill, he is very smart I would say. At least myself, I consider him a smart player, and he is good at entry killing.

I think that is why they won nine rounds on T side against us, because k0nfig was doing his job. On Inferno, I think that we were just too strong on our T side in general, so it's not like he can do anything, like rush somewhere and kill everyone. I think if the team is getting crushed or beaten that hard on CT side, nobody can do anything. You can have exit frags but that doesn't change the fact that you are losing. I think that he played very good in general.