Ukrainian Legend s1mple Talks About His Much-Awaited Return

When asked about his return not going well and what went wrong to cause it, s1mple said:

It's just the beginning of a new team, for me it's a new team, and for them I'm a new player, so everything changed. The structure changed a bit, and we're still trying to find each other and find the synergy. Our main goal is the RMR. We were talking to each other about this tournament and the online tournament we lost, that our main goal was to practice as many maps as possible.

I'm happy we won at least one round on Inferno because we were practicing all seven maps to see what is going to be better for us, Vertigo or Inferno. But against Eternal Fire, their Vertigo was decent and I had no experience on the map, so we decided to remove it. We knew they were going to pick Inferno, we played decent scrims on the map, but the lack of experience was against us.

When asked about how playing CS2 on LAN felt and how he’s adjusting to catch upto the meta, s1mple said:

I wouldn't say that it held my motivation back, but it's become much better now. They just need to fix some AWP shots. I saw w0nderful from NAVI and I also had similar situations when we played scrims and we were shooting in the right direction, but the bullets just disappeared. Overall, I think everything is fine. What can they fix? Maybe they'll need to remove some maps like Vertigo, the maps that everyone plays the least. But I think CS is in good shape right now, much better than it was at the Copenhagen Major.

I think I'm close to that [i.e. catching upto the meta]. It's basically the same for me right now, just this thing when you smoke and Molotov and you can go in front of the smoke, and that's it. And of course, blowing nades in certain spots. For example, from Short, you can bounce the nade and extinguish the door smoke. I think I just need to learn more nades overall, that's my priority right now, to get more nades on different maps.

When asked about his overall experience at Team Falcon, s1mple said

First of all thanks to NAVI for the opportunity to let me play, and of course thanks to Falcons for the invitation right before the RMR roster lock. I'll try to do my best, but our main goal and my personal goal as a team is to be in the top eight of the Shanghai Major at least. I feel we can do it, but we just need to upgrade our map pool. We are trying to feel each other and find this synergy because it's the first time I met the guys. Even when I played as a stand-in for one match against Metizport, I never met them in real life, and now it's a whole different experience.

We just need more time. It would be amazing to beat Eternal Fire, I don't know if they are top 5 or top 6 on the HLTV rankings right now, but still, they're better than us and they deserve the win more. They've been together much longer and they had so much experience, even against NAVI on LAN, when they lost the best-of-five, they were so close to beating them on Dust2, and NAVI's Dust2 is one of the best. 

I feel CS is in the shape where any team can beat any team right now. Of course, the most consistent team for me is NAVI, and after that are all other teams like G2, FaZe, and Spirit. But anyone can just take a step forward and beat NAVI once, and they'll be on the same level. As I said, everyone can beat any team, and the team that is practicing the most and sticking together as players has the best chance, like it was before.

Towards the end, when asked about NAVI and how it has become the #1 team in the world after he left, s1mple said

I feel like they became mentally stronger as players, especially after the Copenhagen win. Of course, they're doing well. Everyone is saying they don't have superstars, but I think they have superstars, it's just always different superstars at different points. I'm pretty sure all of them are working so hard to achieve what they achieved, and it's an incredible result with six finals in a row.

I'm just looking forward to playing against them. Their games in every final were so close, it could be even six wins six wins in a row for them, or it could be six losses as well. It's interesting how they're gonna show themselves in Shanghai, and maybe we'll face them if we finally win at least one map [laughs]. I think we have the same group, so there is a possibility that if we win two best-of-ones and they win two best-of-ones, we can face each other in a best-of-three. It would be nice to play against ex-teammates.