“From day one, I've been telling my players, 'Guys, if someone approaches you - no problem, we will talk. If I have an opportunity to give you a boost and get you into a top organization like NAVI or G2, it will be a big success for me... that a player from my team, that's been on the market for just one year, was able to sell a strong Ukrainian player. It will be a success, business and image-wise. There are different business models. Some see sporting results — now I hope we will have an opportunity to get to the top and play well — but there are other things, like the development of our players. If we can give young players from Ukraine a chance to develop by our example, it will be very good."
Passion UA’s dream run
Passion UA came into the tournament ranked #49 in the world with little experience (i.e. just one prior LAN appearance). Very few people had their eyes set on Passion UA as bigger names like G2, NAVI, Vitality etc dominated the forum discussions. However, they stood out at the end of day 1 as they put out insane results, beating both Virtus.pro (16-14) and Team Spirit (13-11) in close but intense games.
Many fans were curious as to how such a team was able to pull off such great results, in response to which Rodion "fear" Smyk revealed that the team underwent a 300-day bootcamp in preparation for the Europe RMR.
“Our team, we're young, we were on bootcamp for eight months [living together], grinding a lot, and we always watch these top 10, top 15, top 5, teams. We watched around 900 demos, I don't know, a lot. Every day, we watch three or four demos. Every time. With the team, individually. But they don't watch my demos. And that's why they don't have the advantage — I have the advantage.
You need to understand it's the first team for the other four players, and they are very young. I had experience playing with m0NESY, b1t, headtr1ck, and at that time it was their first professional team as it is now for my players. And this means that they have a bright future ahead of them. They improve every day, and our goal for this first day was at least 1-1 because we want to stay longer. If we stay longer, we will improve, day by day. Overall, huge respect to my players.
I lived with them for eight months and we never had bad dialogue or toxicity. Never. Maybe me, I was a bit emotional, but everything was good vibes. Eight months, I don't know if some other team could do that for eight months and never fight. It's impossible.”
Later, Passion UA faced off against Astralis for their qualification game and best them 2-0, 13-9 on their map, Inferno, and 13-11 on Astralis’s map, Ancient. From there, they qualified for their first tier-one LAN event. Now, they are set to face BIG during their opening game at the Perfect World Shanghai Major in December.
