molodoy on his former teammates: “I never stopped talking to them for a second.”
FURIA sniper Danil “molodoy” Golubenko analyzed his team’s losses at the last two Majors in an interview with OFFSTAGE, talked about finding motivation and taking time off, and answered a question about communicating with former teammates.
On the losses against paiN Gaming at the BLAST.tv Austin Major and Natus Vincere at the StarLadder Budapest Major
First of all, you know, it’s like in Kazakhstan. When I played on a Kazakhstani team and you’re playing against your own compatriots, there’s always some kind of rivalry. Everyone wants to beat each other. I think it’s the same in Brazil: when you play against Brazilians, other Brazilians really want to beat you. And we understood that; we wanted to win just as much. But for me, you know, there isn’t that kind of intense rivalry. You know you can always lose; you have to always understand that. But in matches like that, your mindset is completely different. And, I guess, as for why we lost—I’d say we started 3-0. We started off pretty confidently. And we came back on Inferno; we were on some kind of intense motivation, and it was like that played a bad joke on us. It was like we got too hyped up and let our emotions get the best of us when it went to overtime, and we just couldn’t calm down in the moment and start playing CS calmly. We were reacting too quickly to everything. And I think that’s what kept us from winning back then. ...> To be honest, I don’t know what went wrong on Train [against NAVI at the StarLadder Budapest Major. — Ed.]. It was as if we just didn’t log into the server, or as if we’d poured all our emotions into Inferno. To be honest, I didn’t play that well either, so I don’t know what went wrong—it’s a good question—but it’s all about experience.
On motivation and rest
It feels like I always want to play “Counter,” but sometimes it feels like I need to rest, and you realize yourself that today just isn’t the day. And sometimes, on the contrary, I want more, and sometimes there’s that moment where, well, today just isn’t the day at all. I relax—well, I try to go to the gym, watch a movie or a TV show, and hang out with friends. That’s enough for me. The gym helps, you know, not so much to just “reset.” The gym just helps me listen to music and think about things. I can even think about “Counter-Strike” itself—I can think about anything.
On keeping in touch with former teammates
I keep in touch with them [AW and sFade8. — Ed.]—I wouldn’t say every day, but we’re in touch very often. When I’m in Serbia, for example, I always try to meet up with them, hang out, have some tea, and we’re always in touch. Always. I haven’t stopped communicating with them for a single second. <...> Roughly speaking, for me, AW, kAlash—I’d say—and sFade8—for me, these three people were together, and we went through all that difficult time we had together. And I don’t want to cut back on communicating with them for even a second.
In the previous part of the interview, FURIA sniper Danil “molodoy” Golubenko talked about how he had to drop out of university for the sake of his esports career. When the player decided to pursue Counter-Strike, he still had neither confidence in the future nor the means to buy a computer.
