flameZ on Team Vitality’s struggles on Dust2: “We were just too lazy”
Team Vitality rifler Shahar “flameZ” Shushan, in an interview at BLAST Open Porto 2026, assessed the team’s performance against 9z Team, discussed their loss to Inner Circle, and explained what changes Vitality made to their gameplay on Dust2.
On the victory over 9z Team
We showed a completely different side of CS compared to what we played two days ago against Inner Circle. I think jL also played very well and adapted to the game very quickly. We’ve had a lot of discussions over these past two days, and perhaps the loss to Inner Circle also helped him better understand how we play—not just the system, but specifically our style of play. So I think we found a lot of positives. jL played very well today, and I’m glad about that, too.
On the loss to Inner Circle
Against Inner Circle, there were many moments when we were torn between two options: one player wanted to take one action, the other wanted to take a different one. But today, if someone calls, we go along with that call, and we don’t care whether it’s a bad call, a good one, or what we think is a bad play against our opponent. We just do what one person says because it’s always important to have a single plan. It was tough against Inner Circle because we have a lot of plans that change very quickly. We’re used to executing those plans very quickly, but with jL, you have to keep him in the loop through communication. Sometimes you’re not focused on that because you’re too focused on your crosshairs and things like that. So today we managed to establish that connection pretty well, and it got a lot better.
About Dust2
I think what we were missing on Dust2—though I believe we’re still very good on this map and still understand it very well—is that we were simply too lazy. We took everything too lightly, thinking people wouldn’t try to stop us. And on the CT side in the last three games we played before this, we didn’t do anything. We were just AFK on the server. We’d just show up at the CT spawn and let them do whatever they wanted. And our Dust2 play up until then—in those 36 games we won—was all about how we disrupted our opponents: we played aggressively, we were right in their faces. And then there were about four games where we were just lazy and didn’t do anything. We took everything too lightly.
Earlier, Team Vitality defeated 9z Team 2-0 in maps during the group stage of the BLAST Open Porto 2026. Tomorrow, Shahar “flameZ” Shushan’s team faces another elimination match against the loser of the Legacy/Team Falcons series.
Photo by Sophie Barrowclough, BLAST.
