YEKINDAR: “Right now, MOUZ is in pretty intimidating form—I’m not going to lie.”

Compared to how I felt in Malta, I’m feeling much better now. Maybe that’s why I’m playing so much better. But the problem is that I still have a cough, and my stuffy nose hasn’t gone away either. Still, that’s the least of my problems.

Winning the 2026 World Championship gave the team confidence, brought a lot of positive emotions, and strengthened our belief in each other. This is very important because at some point you start to doubt yourself—thinking, “We’re doing something wrong; we need to fix a lot of problems,” and so on. I think the main reason we haven’t continued to dominate everyone since our victory is that we’re very tired. So much so that we can’t even fully savor the joy of victory and the positive emotions. But there are two sides to every coin. I’m glad we won there and made it into the top 4 here.

MOUZ is a very strong team. We’ll probably lose. But objectively speaking, I think we’re playing just as well. It’s just that MOUZ is in a bit of a scary form right now—I won’t lie. Throughout my career, we’ve faced various formidable opponents. MOUZ is a strong team, but I don’t know if we should be that afraid of them. They play very well. I respect them. We’ll see how it all plays out.

That was sarcasm—it’s just a video game; we’re not afraid of anyone. It’s not like we’re getting beaten up or anything like that. It’s a video game. We’ll see how it all plays out. It’s a 50-50 chance. Either we’ll win, or we’ll lose.