March 30th, Paris. Short and intense, this is how we could describe this European Challenger Series season. Full of bounces, twists and turns.

Paris Saint-Germain eSports’ team has faced the challenge, gave the best of itself and never gave up even in hard times. Despite this, the LCS promotion tournament’s spot slipped through our fingers due to a loss against Fnatic Academy 2-3. We’ve met Bora ‘Yellowstar’ Kim to know his point of view on this last thrilling series.

This match was one of the most important of the season. We thought that it would be a good idea to come back on the team training and this last series.

Bora says : « Going into the match against Fnatic Academy, we had a 3 weeks preparation where none of the team had real informations about the opponent. Our work was based on ourselves, working on our main issues and improve our strength. We were more confident compared to the previous weeks. The series was very close, it could have gone either way but I believe that they played better than us in that series and deserve the win. I would say that their team and members had more experience which led them to the victory. »

Once that we knew that PSG eSports’ opponents was Fnatic Academy, the team focused on their strengths, banning the champions that could be hard to deal with and taking comfort picks. But FNA adapted really well and fought back with an exotic composition.

« Looking at their roster, I would say that their main play maker is Kikis. We were expecting him to whether making plays on the map on a tank or split pushing. The most difficult part for our team was their 1-3-1 team composition which is not very common currently and gave them the upper hand. Our team was not used to it and the adaptation was not on point. The main advices that I gave to the players was to play with no fear, I would rather have them initiating the plays and not fully working than giving them an advantage and slowly lose. Also, keeping calm and focused for the mindset and play like if it was a scrim. »

Heartbreaking series for us… but some moves to remember against @FNATIC Academy ! 🔴🔵 https://t.co/FQ8K9xL0Tc pic.twitter.com/a3VSEziDwR — PSG eSports (@PSGeSports) 27 mars 2017

The series was very tied and when we look back, we can see all the progress that have been made. Some players had to quickly learn english to communicate with the others. It needed time to set up a good synergy. But time was the hardest factor to master : a split goes really fast and it’s difficult to fix the mistakes.

« In my opinion, the team is not reproducing what they have done and learned in practice in the real games yet. There is more trust and confidence but this was one of the most important series of the season. We had a very rough start, the team was very new, we were facing many issues and had to solve in such a short amount of time since CS regular season pass by very quickly. But looking back, I’m happy of how the team worked together, realizing that we had to step up in order to be able to be a contender. » says Yellowstar.

Paris Saint-Germain eSports has been stopped at the doors of the LCS promotion tournament, but everything’s not lost yet. The Summer Split is coming and will begin in June, which means that we will have a second chance to qualify. This time the team will have more time to get ready.

« We gave it 1 year to qualify for LCS. To be honest, we had the tools to qualify for LCS Summer Split so I’m seeing it as a disappointment. Hadrien and I are always working to improve every aspects of the team, we have many ideas during those 2 months where we are not going to compete in order to be stronger and aiming to achieve our goal. »

Stay tuned as we’ll meet again in two months for the European Challenger Series. Allez Paris !