YEKINDAR: "[it's] possible that this is our last tournament together"

Everyone's favorite Latvian, Mareks "YEKINDAR" Gaļinskis of Outsiders, had a chat with Dust2's Ryan Friend directly following their victory over Complexity on Overpass with a 16-9 scoreline. With their round three win, they are now sitting on a 2-1 scoreline and are set to play against forZe in their BO3 tomorrow.

Overpass was very interesting to see, what was the thought process in narrowing it down? Was this something you guys wanted to plan for or what's going on?

Well, I mean last time we played complexity, we played Overpass already so and it was close. It was the actually the same scenario where we were starting CT-side and they were doing B hits and we lost like three B hits; this game we lost two B hits.

So, an improvement.

Oh yeah, I guess so, but overall that's why the CT-half was bad the first time and now the second time. But on the T-side we faced rolled them, today as well, so we were ready for Overpass. Probably more expected Inferno because we won against them on Overpass before, but Overpass and Inferno are both our maps, so we had super confidence against them.

Well, it was funny, I was talking with the Complexity team before their match and they were saying as well how it was almost Inferno. And they were like, “well, North America last three times on Inferno yesterday, we weren't going to make it a fourth”.

They're going to make first Overpass.

Heading into this game, was there anything that you looked at in Complexity and were specifically planning for? Like any players, any strats? What was kind of the idea behind the team here?

I'm not sure, but I think we always have super confidence against them, I think they're afraid of us in a way, you can feel it in-game and they're making mistakes. Either they do it unconsciously or they're stressed, or something like that. So, you can feel it, you can see it; the 1v2 on the pistol round of JT coming out of smoke heaven when it's like 2 seconds left. The eco that they lost on when they were CT-side where I killed Grim under with a Deagle, it's all stress and you can feel it, and when you win those rounds, you just understand that you're going to win the game.

It was interesting, in my interview with FaNg he said there was a "second disconnect" and with that pistol he was saying "oh we had to go get the kit from the other side", they were going to make a play and then he just got caught out and it was like "oh, do we rush him? oh do we do this?”

Yeah, that's what I'm saying, they had a lot of time like 25 seconds to actually just hold your crosshair, talk, let the one teammate who died call what you need to do and you just do it. So, any other play, they would win probably.

Even with that other eco where Jame had the AWP and the rest of you were on Glocks, do you think that's just kind of the same thing? They're not slow enough, they're not trying to think cautiously enough?

I think maybe the one AWP round they maybe didn't understand the economy fully or maybe they were too afraid of the AWP. But you need to understand that if you give so much space on A, it's always, you either need to stack A or you need to have a certain plan to win. They didn't have a certain plan, Grim just went out under towards like the mid-area and died and when it's 4v5, it's super hard. The game is getting super hard even against pistols, so it's like 80% win-rate for 5v4. You can feel the difference when one man dies, so I think it's Grim's mistake, but obviously it's an overall composure mistake about them not having a plan to actually win.

So you've played a lot against EU and obviously now playing against NA, what kind of environment or how is it so different playing these NA teams compared to other EU teams? Is it a noticeable style? Is it noticeable differences or what do you see?

The main difference, I think, is that the EU teams have a lot more variables how to play on T-side, they have a lot more rounds or some micro-plays. Against Complexity it was easy because they literally have like maybe three [set] rounds in each map or something. Like legit, and when you understand those three rounds and you understand what default they're playing, then it’s super easy to play against them. EU teams mind-game a lot more and their individual players play in their spots a lot more micro-challenging than NA players, I feel like.

That's super interesting, I appreciate that. We can cut this next part if you don't really want to talk about it. But given the current situation of the team and everything that's going on, how are you doing? How do you feel that the team is doing in handling it at a stage such as this?

Well, it could be possible that this is our last tournament together so everybody... It's not certain, nobody knows what's going to happen and we just want to win and we're focusing on the win. It doesn't matter what's in the future when you have the present, you need to perform at the present and everybody just puts put their ego aside and plays. We're a team, we're Outsiders and we want to win.

Thank you so much.

Following their win over Complexity, Outsiders are set to duke it out against forZe in their 2-1 qualification match. The CIS clash kicks off tomorrow at 09:45AM.