Taras Bortnik

Special to VPEsports

In round three of the mid-matches at the IEM Katowice CSGO Major, G2 was stunned by AVANGAR and was one match away from being eliminated from the Major. For Kenny “kennyS” Schrub, that match served a valuable lesson as G2 was able to take down both Fnatic and Tyloo, earning a spot on the Legends stage. kennyS gave VPEsports a look into his thoughts after that pivotal match with AVANGAR.

Are you happy with the performance that you showed?

Yes! I think we finally managed to show our true face. The first map was just like the previous days: sleepy, tough, bad communication. We just felt way too much pressure, but we had a good bo3 and we fixed our mistakes and played well. But I am really sure that we can play much better. On first day, we had low energy and struggled a lot because of Major pressure. The biggest pressure was from the fact that we are perform very well at practice all the time. I put pressure on myself too, because 2018 was poor for us and I want to prove myself. We really want to achieve something in Katowice. We want to show people that we are deserving of your support. But whatever will happen tomorrow, I know what I am capable of.

Tomorrow you are going to play against Cloud9 or TyLoo. Which team you prefer more?

Match up will be tough no matter of which team we are going to play against. I prefer to play against Chinese because I know them well, it’s bo3 and I am confident. TyLoo has shown great game so we have to prepare well.

From the outside it looks like that the win condition of your team is not about defeating enemy, but about not beating yourselves. What do you think?

Exactly. Sometimes we lose the first map and it’s super hard for us to comeback. We have to stop being scared by the thought of losing and stop worrying about the pressure.

The decisive map was Overpass and you lost two times in a row during the stage. Why haven’t you just banned it?

Because we didn’t feel the necessity of doing this. It wasn’t some kind of trick. On the previous day against Vega for example, we were just sleepy as fuck! Our communication can be much better, it’s sometimes a key for victory. Today we played more aggressive, less readable because AVANGAR showed us that we were predictable.

2018 year was a hard year for the French scene. But for now we have two strong teams with quite good results, so can we now say that the French pro scene is out of crisis?

I can say that we aren’t out of any crisis. But we are still dealing with the struggles of the past and we need more experience and results to step out of it.

What do you think about ZyWoo as a player?

He’s good.

That simple?

Yes.

Before this Major, what were your expectations? How did you prepare for this competition?

We tried to be ambitious because we simply want to win. We practiced our CT side a lot, but we knew that official games would be different from what we’d seen at practices. Our preparation was good in the sense that we tried something new with new features. We worked super hard, but we didn’t have much of any expectations because we knew that our work would pay off at some point, we just didn’t know when. And it’s paying off now.

Can you compare two last rosters of G2?

This one is much more ambitious. We also have better chemistry in the game. Sometimes obviously, it doesn’t work well, but sometimes it does. This roster works better itself even tho we sometimes get scared and feel a lot of the pressure.

How do you manage with a haters and hatred G2 has received from some people out there?

There once was a moment when I wanted to make a step back from the social media because last year nothing was really good in my life and I suffered from haters. I stayed because I wanted to prove that they are wrong.

Do you have any ideas about how to stop this hatred?

Yeah, we have to show good results. That is why we are working so hard right now. We just have to be patient and understand that people can’t be patient. But I don’t really care, it’s all about myself and my team.