FURIA player Mareks YEKINDAR Gaļinskis gave an interview to Players special correspondent Sofiia Pikhalo after the loss to MOUZ in the quarterfinals of the IEM Cologne 2025 in CS2.
So, thank you for your performance today, it was great and you with Spinx and KSCERATO was like on the top every match, every map. What happened for your chemistry, maybe do you know what was lacking to win every game?
Yeah, honestly we're in a transitioning period right now on our CT side mostly, but also on the T side where we're trying to think less that we're playing Faceit and think less that we need to win individually, but actually doing maximum what you can, like valuing your life and valuing teamwork and going through crossfires. I'm going to survive, I'm going to take first contact, a lot of communication is involved and today I feel like we showed really good glimpses of it. And even though we could have closed the match, still some of the rounds, because MOUZ is a great team, they were doing great things and yeah, I mean, I'm honestly happy how the game went, even though we lost, I felt like we will learn a lot from this game.
In this transitional period, do you value learning period that much, that you're like okay with losing big tournaments, but learn something from strong teams?
Yeah, I think it depends on our feeling, did we show what we were capable of? I think here everybody will agree that we showed that we can compete with these teams, maybe definitely could have won, and this is definitely not the game where we leave the stadium looking down at the ground and looking at the phone, you know, so...
It's really great.
It's only, you know, we're a team of four, maybe five months, and for us it's important just to learn from these games, because from losses you can learn a lot more than from wins.
So, next step you're working up for Major, right? So, prepare and be the best team. I saw one cinematic from ESL when your communication is like three-lingual, and is it really the issue in your team that language is the barrier?
I think it depends, In some situations maybe the language sometimes is rapid and misunderstood maybe or misheard, but I don't think it's the main problem, I think it's more about the mindset. And everybody's transitioning right now into the mindset of a team, being emotionally strong, helping your teammates, and I mean both in-game and outside of the game, so that's our focus right now.
Do you have like different mindset also by age as well? Because you have really different ages of players.
I think everybody has the same mindset, maybe molodoy is a little bit different because he's TikTok generation brain rot child, but I think he's very bright, you know. You tell him once, you tell him two times, third time there's no need to tell him anymore.
Yes, I saw him, he’s shined. Thank you for your performance again and see you later.
