Slingshot’s Blake Bottrill talked to G2’s Adil “ScreaM” Benrlitom at ESL New York about his team’s roller coaster performances, trying to be consistent and goals for the rest of the year.

Blake Bottrill: You guys had a bit of a rough tournament here but you’ve been playing well up until this point, you did well at Starseries. What when wrong this weekend?

Adil “ScreaM” Benrlitom: Since we came back from vacation, everything went wrong. We lost of first kills and our mechanics. It takes time to come back. We lost a lot of practice and we lost a lot of games online so our confidence went away as well. This is the first big failure of the team, I think that is just that we didn’t play enough individually and we weren’t that good skill-wise.

BB: OpTic ended up playing very well this weekend, were you surprised by them yesterday?

AB: No. Not at all. I think we just played bad, I think they are a good team but I think we are supposed to win against them. They didn’t show anything special, what they did was really simple. It’s all about headshots really.

BB: The crowd in here is not the biggest you’ve ever played in front of but it got pretty loud for a while yesterday. Can you hear the crowd when you’re on stage?

AB: We could hear a little bit of crowd and barely the commentators. It is better in the booths. I think it is better in the booths.

BB: You’re coming off that good result in Kiev. You ended up taking out Faze, EnVyUs and Dignitas. How important is it to be consistent as a top team?

AB: I think Kiev was not that great as well. We struggled a lot against those teams. We are supposed to win more easily against Dignitas and EnVyUs with a stand-in, so I think we played bad. We got wrecked in the final as well so it showed that we are not that good. It think it is very difficult to be consistent because you need to play all the time. We are working on it right now, so we will see how it goes.

BB: You’ve got a long standing rivalry with EnVyUs. How does playing against EnVyUs compare to playing against any other team?

AB: I don’t think anyone likes it in France to play against French teams because they know everything you do. It’s always gonna be tough and you never know who is going to win. It’s really random. The best French team is always gonna lose against the second best. I don’t know why, but it always works that way. I don’t like those games.

BB: If you had to pick four other teammates to play with, who would it be?

AB: I don’t want to play with anyone to be honest. My team is playing bad right now but I think we have the perfect chemistry. We could win everything if we want to, we just have to do whatever it takes to win.

BB: You’ve got Epicenter, IEM Oakland and ELEAGUE still coming up before the end of the year. What’s your expectations heading into the next couple of months?

AB: I think we have two weeks until Epicenter. After that we are going to be traveling a lot so these are going to be really important. I think we just have to play a lot. We have been talking after the loss last night. We just have to play individually a lot more and I think everything will be back.

BB: A lot of people this year have been talking about the over-saturation of tournaments, just a lot more Counter-strike to play this year. How does that feel from a players perspective?

AB: As I said, we are going to be traveling a lot. It’s amazing to travel but in two months I think we are going to stay 10 days at home. It’s going to be difficult and it’s not always good to have so many events in a row. I think that is going to change anyway but I enjoy every event I play.

Photos: Helena Kristiansson/ESL, eslgaming.com