Team Spirit struggled quite a lot on their T-side, with donk being the only one competing at G2’s level. While the Russian team demonstrated great form at the start of the year, they’ll have to work very hard to stay consistent. On the other hand, G2 Esports genuinely redeemed themselves after losing IEM Rio 2024 last month, with Ilya "m0NESY" Osipov pulling out all the stops to make it happen. It’s no surprise that he won his third MVP award of the year at this tournament, something that he also discussed with HLTV in a post-match interview.
When asked about how the 3-0 victory meant to him, m0NESY said
First of all, I feel… I don't know. When you start a tournament you don't think about your goal is to win, you just think about game by game. This feeling in the end, when you play the grand final and win, you see people around talking about you and your team, and it motivates the team and especially me to play even more and give 100%. In the end all these people who are writing shit just disappear, and it's the best. It feels like this, a very good feeling.
I'm also happy for my team, happy for everyone, and especially for malbsMd because it's his first year in tier one and he already got two BLAST trophies, World Final and Fall Final. Very nice.
When asked about how everyone was in complete sync that game, having their own spotlight moments, m0NESY said
Yeah, when everything is clicking and everyone is playing well... And sometimes malbsMd is playing positions where he cannot get too much impact, maybe sometimes it affects him because he is not active, but we have these roles in the team so we cannot really do anything about it. But he always pulls some very good moments, he's insanely sharp, his aim is on point, he's playing very good in clutches and any scenario of a round. When everything is clicking and the calls are good, it goes very well.
Sometimes it can go like 6-0, for example on Dust2, and for some reason I kill a guy on B and I want to run out, in my head sometimes I just want to finish the round faster, for some reason, and it can be dangerous for us. Especially for me, because I can do some stupid shit sometimes. It can work sometimes, and sometimes it doesn't.
When asked about whether or not he’s satisfied with three MVPs for the year, m0NESY said
I am not satisfied, I want more. The last one is Shanghai, the last tournament of the year, and we are going to put all our focus and all our concentration, everything into this tournament. Obviously when you win a tournament you are satisfied, but you are satisfied for some time and on the next day, you want even more. I don't think a player can always be satisfied, he always wants to win, and that's what I mean, coming into the next tournament everyone will want to win the last Major of the year.
I'm going to say that I love my teammates, just because of who they are. I'm surrounded by great people since I joined G2 who have been helping me always during my career in tier-one. They've always been helping me when I struggled, always helped me to learn from my mistakes, especially NiKo, he was always my mentor or teacher, and obviously the rest of the guys as well. Since last year I improved a lot, not only individually, I think also in the team, in the macro. A lot of things I learned just because of them, without them I would be nothing and would learn much much slower.
When asked about what he did to improve so much at this tournament, especially on CT-side, m0NESY said
We just learned from mistakes. We learn from mistakes, we improve, we adapt, and I think that's everything that I can say. If players are going to play the same game, do the same mistakes, I think it's bad, but in our team everyone learns from his mistakes, from enemy mistakes, from other player's mistakes, and it helps us to improve. We also had a bootcamp before and I think it had so much impact.
When asked about his preparation for the upcoming Shanghai Major, m0NESY said
It gives us confidence, 100%. During the RMR we have to still say focused, we shouldn't think because of this tournament, this victory, that we are going to smash everyone. Obviously you are confident, but you don't have to overthink a lot. We haven't discussed yet about our prep, how many off days we will have, but I'm pretty sure we will have a lot of days to practice.
