Team Vitality player Shahar flameZ Shushan gave a short interview to Players correspondent Alex Kharchenko after the victory over NAVI at the BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025.
Next match is against Mouz. What can you say about them in this tournament? Were you expecting them to beat spirit?
I expected them to beat Spirit but I also expected spirit to beat them. CS is so tough now, both teams could beat each other.
I think in this Major they have a sloppy run, but it goes for them, they break through the matches, they come back a lot, from 0-2 that’s really tough but they’re coming back, and tomorrow… We played against them a lot of times, we know how they play and they know how we play, so it’s gonna be a good match again, but we don’t know how it will really go.
Do you think it will be a close match in terms of maybe some additional rounds on maps?
It could be, it’s CS2. The map can finish 13-3, it could be 12 and overtimes. It’s tough to predict, but we are going to do our best.
What can you say about the crowd? I think you hear an F word about apEX, what can you say about it?
It’s part of a game, it’s entertainment. Sometimes you might be booed, sometimes they might like you. We as a team focus on what we can control, and this power is out of control, if the crowd will favor us or not. I think it’s always nice to cheer for underdogs sometimes, or it could be the alternative, it doesn’t matter, because we still need to play a good game.
So you didn't feel any stress or pressure because of the booing?
No, not because of the crowd. There's always pressure because it's a major, it's a stage game, it's an arena, it's a big tournament. But never because of the crowd, you go like that.
Mirage was quite difficult. At the end, you took the initiative and were able to dominate the server. What was the crucial moment on the map?
I think we didn't start so strongly and I was very sloppy in the beginning, like whiffing a lot and not shooting so well. On the other hand, we still kept going as a team, we didn't get tilted. We kept going, focused round by round, and I think that kind of carried us through a 6-6 on the half.
On the T side, we came with a lot of confidence. We had a lot of good plans. And then from there, it was just ping pong, talking a lot about the game, and that's how we sort of treat every game.
But obviously, when the game is rolling and IGL is feeling it and the players are feeling this play and this play, this is how it's going to go. I think this is how it went against them.
Talking about match preparations, you played against NAVI, I think it was in August of 2024. Has the team preparation changed?
No, no, no, of course. I think even if we played them yesterday and we play them today, it's going to be different with B1ad3. Also, nowadays, people anti-strat way more than they did before, so it's just going to be, people know what they did. I think we did prep for them and they did play a bit different than what we expected in some sense.
But you don't try to anti-strat the round, you try to anti-strat more the fundamentals of the game, I feel like. For me, when I prepare individually. They obviously changed a lot, but I don't remember how they played in Cologne.
For you personally and for Team Vitality, the final and trophy in this Major is the main goal?
It’s an obvious answer for that. We want to close the season with the best season ever. We have this opportunity and not too much away from that. We are just gonna give our best and hopefully close it out, but of course every tournament in CS, even last year when we got only one trophy, we came with the mind “We need to get this trophy and we will come and do our best to get it”.
