Now that Team Astralis has been eliminated at the hands of Team Spirit, cadiaN’s debut run at BLAST Fall Final has swiftly come to an end. The team’s opening game with Team Vitality was a matchup of misfortune as the powerhouse absolutely decimated them with a 2-0 score, where not a single round was conceded in the first map. Their second game, however, wasn’t one-sided as they made Team Spirit work for their victory by taking the second map. Ultimately, though, Team Spirit won 2-1, leading to Astralis’s elimination in last place.
What did cadiaN say?
Before the interview with HLTV, cadiaN expressed that he was happy with the team’s respectable performance against Team Spirit: “It gives a big boost to know that we can implement the style that we have tried to practice for a very limited time in an important game.”
When asked about how the team bounced back from their one-sided game with Vitality yesterday, cadiaN said
I think we talked about the circumstances surrounding the current tournament, with all the talk and all that stuff, and we tried our best to manage it. But Vitality are also a really good team with a lot of structure, so it was of course super difficult to play a good game versus the number-two team in the world when you had such little practice.
When we watched Inferno, there were a lot of marginal situations that I think we could have overcome. A 1v2 in the pistol round for us, a 1v1 between me and ZywOo in the first buy round, device's 1v1… There were a lot of chances, we also attacked ZywOo when he was alone on the site in a 5v4 with the AWP, and he was just making ZywOo things.
So it wasn't as grim as it looked, but I think today was way more similar to how we've shown ourselves in practice. I'm really proud of that and it also gives a big boost to know that we can implement the style that we have tried to practice for a very limited time in an important game.
When asked about what the main takeaway for the team is, given that they have already been eliminated, cadiaN said
That we are very close to being at the top, and also very far on some maps at least. I think that we leave with a lot of pride and dignity about the way that we played and the way that we handled ourselves under pressure.
I'm very excited to get started with this team and bring in more drills, more tactics, and more philosophies. You can feel the fire inside of everyone that this is the team that we are going to move forward with and one that we believe can win trophies.
When asked about his personal playstyle shift from an AWPer to a rifler, cadiaN said
In practice, we didn't use the double AWP as much because I wanted to get used to rifling rounds. For me, having ten or more years of experience with AWPing, taking the double AWP is not going to be that big of an issue.
So it is something that we're going to implement. Maybe today, I sometimes bought the AWP a little too much, so that's something we'll have to evaluate. But it also worked, we had many good rounds with it, so I think it would be silly not to utilize the potential of me and device AWPing together.
