M80 Sent Home As FURIA Grabs Final Qualifying Spot

After having delivered on the high expectations set for him, FalleN briefly said: "It feels like a weight off my shoulders," M80, on the other hand, don’t seem to be all that discouraged, as there are always tournaments to play, even with 2024 coming to an end soon. The team’s IGL,  Elias "⁠s1n⁠" Stein, spoke to HLTV after the loss to echo such sentiments.

When asked about how he felt about the game with FURIA and what went wrong, s1n said

It hurts at the moment. The tournament is over for us, the Major dreams have ended, and we have to go home. I really enjoyed the time here, it hurts a lot, but we just couldn't do it. FURIA are obviously a good team, but we know how to play versus good teams. 

I think we play stronger versus better teams, but in the end, our protocols and our level were not as consistent as we would love to have it. But overall, we showed glimpses of what we can do. We had a good T side on Anubis, which is a good example, and I think we can show a really strong level versus top teams. But on the CT side, we were just lacking. We were getting played rather than playing ourselves, if you can say it like that.

When asked about something positive M80 can take away from the event, given they were very close to the qualification spot, s1n said

I have to say so. It was a pretty rough first game, we lost versus a much worse team. No offense to them [BOSS], I like the guys, but I think we have higher aspirations than losing in the first game at an important tournament like this. I admire our resilience to bounce back, and I think it also showed in the second game in the great comeback we did.

Same with the decider game versus BESTIA, we had an insane mentality, we came back almost from rock bottom and just kept believing. Now it's just about finding our consistency and gameplay, adding these heroic comeback moments to it, and I think we can be great.

When asked about their loss against BOSS at the start of the RMR and whether or not it potentially led them to play against teams like Complexity and FURIA, s1n said

For sure, especially with this system. I'm not too familiar with Bucholz, but overall, just losing to a worse team, that's why we played the decider game in the end. For the kickstart of the tournament, we had to start sharp, and unfortunately, we couldn't do that. Also, Vertigo was one of our better maps in practice, but we couldn't show consistency on it. It definitely sucks, especially losing the first game.

When asked about what he thinks about M80 when it comes to playing best-of-threes over best-of-ones, s1n said

I would prefer best-of-threes, I think the better team will always come out on top. The start of this tournament was a bit weird for me, I had a weird SSD, not that it was a problem because we figured it out before the game, but I just remember that I was not really into the game at the moment. I think this translated into my voice, and it's like a chain reaction.

When the IGL's voice is down, it translates to the next guy and maybe adds a little bit of nerves. We're also playing in a new country. It's always something different, but I don't really care about the schedule, it is what it is, and it's been like this for a while. MR12 is rough, we lost both pistols in this game, just a hard map.

Towards the end, when asked about what’s the plan for the rest of the year, s1n said

Yeah, I think we have nothing on the calendar right now, it's now empty. I will go home, I haven't been home since the player break, so I will enjoy that for sure. But overall, looking back at the games, especially for me as a leader individually, it was my first RMR as an IGL, so I can improve in a lot of ways. I just want to improve, and the same goes for next season, which will be really important. New tournaments, a lot of tournaments, the new system, there will be so much going on. We can just only look forward to it. That's the beauty of CS, there are always new tournaments.