By Taras Bortnik

Special to VPEsports

VPEsports caught up with Denis “electronic” Sharipov following his teams victory over Evil Geniuses to earn a spot in the semifinals of the ESL Pro League Season 10 Finals in Odense.

The star player talked about the team’s results, s1mple as captain, boombl4’s leadership, Blad3’s impact, his family, and more in this exclusive interview.

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VPEsports: Which opponent would you prefer to play? fnatic or Liquid?

electronic: For us, there is no difference against whom we play. Teams that have reached the semifinals will not be weak, so there is no difference in who we play against.





VPEsports: In the group stage you took first place. Did any matches stand out as difficult?

electronic: There were no difficult matches. I think we just started using a different approach. We have brought a lot of new things, we have a completely new system. But I will not reveal anything.





VPEsports: Is it due to the fact that s1mple is now a captain, and boombI4 is an in-game leader?

electronic: This is not some kind of point system, just the approach to matches and everything else is different. Therefore, hard matches have not yet been played. I think that hard matches are when you play all three maps and the score is something like 16:14. We haven’t had those yet.





VPEsports: Since I touched on the topic of interaction between s1mple and boombl4, how do you feel about this setup?

electronic: S1mple began to support the team more, he often speaks in command. I reacted positively to this. To be honest, I don’t see any colossal difference between the captain and the in-game leader, we all try the same, we want to win the same way. We don’t have a situation where the captain, for example, puts himself above the rest of the players and allows himself more. It didn’t affect us much.





VPEsports: How do you now communicate in the game, after the departure of Zeus? It’s clear that Boombl4 is the main caller, but is someone else there?

electronic: When I feel the need I also speak up. I try to help Boombl4 as a second player.





VPEsports: Working with B1ad3 is not new to you, you played together for a long time. Can you describe your interaction with him?

electronic: You just need to do your best to give Andrey a chance to show his system, introduce it and show how it works. All of us are investing in his work. We all try to follow his plan, his training process. So far this is working pretty well.





VPEsports: Can you compare the B1ad3 the coach vs. B1ad3 the captain and B1ad3 the eports director?

electronic: There is almost no difference between the captain and the coach. When I played under his leadership, he also analyzed all the mistakes, the team’s game and said how best to play. There is no big difference in this.

When he was a sports director, he could not fit into the work of our past coach. He gave the least amount of advice from that role.





VPEsports: How did you feel when saw yourself on the cover of Forbes?

electronic: To be honest, I don’t often follow such things.





VPEsports: But almost everyone knows about Forbes; this is a very high-status magazine.

electronic: There are no doubts about it. This is very nice, but I don’t want to stop there either.





VPEsports: How often during tournaments do you keep in touch with your family?

electronic: I try to call whenever there is free time, but we really train a lot. It often happens that the training ends in the evening, and we have a bootcamp in Germany, the time zone is different and my daughter is already sleeping at this time so I only communicate with my wife. But I try to call whenever possible, I am just happy to look at the child – it cheers me up. My wife strongly supports me, she sees that we want to go down in history as a team. We are doing a lot for this and I am very grateful to her for the support.





VPEsports: Snappi from Heroic said you should be in the top-5 in this roster. Who would you force out first in the list?

electronic: All these teams play well, but I think that we can force out any of them. The main thing is to do the right job and to believe in it, to believe that everything will work out.





VPEsports: At the end of the year you have a very stacked tournament schedule. EPL, EPICENTER – having to be at your peak performance at all times. Is it difficult to recover between tournaments?

electronic: The most important thing is to rest a day or two after the flight. It is necessary to maintain balance, to be able to relax. But if you come home and you want to play, you have to play. I try to spend time with my family, my wife.





VPEsports: Will they come to cheer for you in Moscow?

electronic: The wife will definitely come! But I can’t promise my daughter, she’s too little! (Laughs)





VPEsports: Finally, any thoughts about the current in-game balance?

electronic: SG still delivers itself, but people greatly overestimate its power. People also shot well from AK.

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