zweih on FUT Esports: “They’re in the top 3 right now, I think, or top 4 in VRS—it’s a phenomenon, I’d say.”

FUT is, like, the only example in the last three years or so where a team of five people who’ve never played at all in Tier 1 championships has broken through. They’re in the top 3, I think, or top 4 in VRS—it’s a phenomenon, I’d say. In CS2, this seems to be the first time a team with absolutely no experience has made it to Tier 1. I mean, all five players have never played anywhere before, and neither has the coach. For them, it’s probably just down to the insane individual skills of all five players. They’ve got Krabeni, the captain with 80 firepower, playing alongside dziugss, dem0n, and lauNX—they all have insane stats, and I’ve watched almost every one of their POVs; they’re absolutely killing it. And their coach doesn’t seem to be too strict, which lets them keep a friendly vibe in TS during official matches—that probably makes it more enjoyable and comfortable for them to play. It’s like they feel part of a family, I think.

I watched their entire qualifiers final. The way K27 dominated that third Overpass map—I think it was 11-6, or maybe 11-5, something like that. I was totally tilted, but obviously I wanted K27 to win because two of my first teammates are on there—kashl1d and relaxxie. I’ve never actually met them in real life—it just worked out that way, even though I went to LanDaLan, they weren’t there. The only one I was at. I wasn’t there [as part of PARIVISION. — Ed.], that was at the end of the year, I was with Spirit. Obviously, I wanted K27 to win so they could fly here for their first Tier-1 LAN, and I was in a tilt when they lost 2-3. But then I was told they’d be coming anyway because FUT backed out, so I was happy. We’ve crossed paths about ten times already.

No, I was also following them [Magic. — Ed.], but they’re cool too; they also made it to their first Tier 1 championship—they came back from 0-2 in a best-of-5, that’s really tough. Yesterday, The MongolZ almost won on Mirage. They were up 10-3 there, then lost two out of four and were down 15-12; they had a million chances to close out the game, but it didn’t work out.

So, after yesterday’s loss to 9z, I analyzed that in four out of the six tournaments I’ve played for PARIVISION—actually, five out of seven—I’ve had a terrible first match of the tournament. I don’t know what causes it, but for some reason it happens, and I don’t know how to fix it or why it happens, but after the first match we… it’s just a warm-up, basically, and then things go smoothly.

We prepare for the first match the same way we do for all the others. I mean, maybe it’s jet lag at some point, maybe someone’s lost their edge for the game, so to speak. We just had a month-long break without any matches, so maybe that’s why. But for some reason, this happens at every single tournament.