saffee: “At paiN, I’m just trying to be a voice of experience within the team.”

HooXi: I’ve been asked about phzy so many times already. I’ve often thought about his form myself; I’d like to figure out how to help him reach his full potential. Of course, we’re working on this as a team. Perhaps some of the blame for his struggles lies with me, since at times I’ve been too strict with him as captain—but it’s all with good intentions. You know, he used to play on some pretty unusual teams, if I may say so, so he wasn’t entirely used to taking responsibility for communication and decision-making in crucial rounds, especially on defense. But he still has a lot of potential inside him that needs to be unlocked, and I hope that over the next six months we’ll be able to do that.

phzy: At the very beginning, I was performing well, as you correctly noted, but then I slipped a bit. There are many reasons for that, the main one, in my opinion, being a minor internal shake-up before the Major. We tried a lot of new things, changed some of our usual routines, and that affected my play. Now, at the start of the new season, I feel like things are starting to fall into place. It could have gone better, of course, but I’m gradually getting back to where I need to be at my own pace. I think our new performance coach will be able to help with the mental aspect of the problem, because when you notice a slump like that, it can start to weigh on your mind.

saffee: I haven’t been doing anything special lately—just training as usual, giving it my all, and things started to fall into place on their own. Right now, I’m really helping biguzera a lot during matches and with preparing for different opponents. Essentially, I’m doing work similar to what I was doing over the last few months at MIBR. Unfortunately, it didn’t pay off back then and, in a sense, fell apart, even despite how hard we worked. At paiN, I’m just trying to be a voice of experience within the team, calm the guys down when necessary, and help with preparations.