Zont1x : "It's easier for us to play against better teams because we're used to outthinking people"

Whilst Spirit have recovered somewhat from their disastrous IEM Cologne campaign, winning BetBoom Dacha Belgrade in the aftermath, they have been short of prime form at ESL Pro League.

Spirit nearly dropped a map to Wildcard, lost a series to  MIBR , and have labored at points against teams they should, based on their stature, be comfortably beating. The beginning of Spirit's playoff campaign followed a similar vein, with the Leonid "⁠chopper⁠" Vishnyakov-led squad stumbling but ultimately taking the series victory over  Imperial  to set up a quarter-final bout against  Natus Vincere .

In his interview with HLTV Myroslav "⁠ Zont1x ⁠" Plakhotia admitted that Spirit are "not in the best shape," but stated his team tends to step up and perform better against the upper echelon of teams. Read on to find out why that is, and for  Zont1x 's assessment of Spirit's Pro League campaign thus far.

What are your thoughts after that series?

It was a terrible performance by me on Nuke, and it was not the best game from us overall, but we managed to win anyway. Dust2 was way better from me and way better from the team, and you can see that from the score.

What do you think was going wrong on Nuke?

It's not ideological problems, it's just because we are not performing our best as players, and as a team as well.

Were you expecting Nuke to be that close? Obviously it was the map you picked.

It's not like I had any expectations, but we just played bad and that's why it was a very close map.

You haven't had the smoothest ride at Pro League in general. Wildcard pushed you close, you lost to MIBR , and you've dropped maps to teams most people would expect you to beat 2-0. What's your assessment of Spirit's performance?

We are not in the best shape, but I think it's easier for us to play against better teams because we're used to outthinking people. When you play against teams outside of the top ten it's not that easy because you are not really understanding how they think, it's very different Counter-Strike. That's the main problem.

As I said before in an interview, we have to play more in order to play better, because we play better in championships and tournaments where we have to play a lot of games. On Friday we play against NAVI, which is a comfortable opponent objectively for us, and we like to play against the best teams, I think it's easier for us. So we will see how it goes.

Is it a motivation thing? It's easier to get excited and pumped up for a game against the best teams, rather than a team that's ranked No. 20?

Yeah obviously, 100%.

I wanted to go back a little bit and talk about BetBoom Dacha. You won that tournament, but when you did win, there didn't seem to be that many celebrations from you as a team. Why was that the case?

Objectively there were only two tier-one teams, Spirit and Mouz , and Mouz were not in the best shape. I could feel that when we played against them, and actually I thought that way even before the game. After we beat them, I'm like 'Okay, they're not in the best shape, now we've beaten them and there's no one anymore.' After we beat Eternal Fire in the grand final, it was like… it was supposed to happen, to be honest.

Does it feel like Spirit are on the right track? Cologne was obviously a disaster, but you've played better and won a lot of games since then.

Yeah.