TeSeS: "If people boo us, we want to shut them up"

In the wake of their crushing defeat to NAVI in the quarter-final of the PGL Antwerp Major, René "TeSeS" Madsen sat down with Liam Slevin of Dust2.us to chat. TeSeS spoke candidly about the loss, the negative reaction that the team faced from the crowd in the arena, and his teammate stavn's upward trending form.

I'm here with TeSeS right after Heroic's quarterfinal games versus NAVI, how are you feeling?

Yeah, I'm just feeling gutted. It was a close game, especially the first two maps. It feels like we should have won Ancient but they played well and they're one of the best teams in the world, so it's fair to lose against them. Only 7% believed in us in the Pick'Ems so big underdogs but we knew we also had a chance to win, it was our time to grab it, but not this time. I feel like the loss is something that we can build on because we can be proud of the first two maps that we had and to play that well in such a big game is something that we've struggled with - so we can be proud of that.

Looking at the specifics of the game, what do you feel went wrong for you guys today?

I think almost everything went wrong on the third map. I missed some smokes, we lost some stupid rounds where we overpeeked, and we lacked the discipline that we had in the first two maps. But it's something that we'll look into, and our Nuke recently has been struggling a bit so we'll try to work on that because, in the past, it has been one of our best maps, so it needs some work on it.

Despite the missed smokes, you had a lot of important clutch rounds, and even on Inferno, the 1v2, the stadium went crazy for it. How did that also affect you and how were the comms after that?

Doing plays like that really is an amazing feeling. The adrenaline is just pumping through your blood and you can just feel your heart pumping so it's not something to be scared of but something to embrace because that's the best way of doing it. But I feel like sometimes, we're not accepting the pressure and I feel like that's a problem for us. But it's something that we talk about every time we play these matches so it's definitely a focus of ours and we're aware of the problem. I think we'll be proud of today and we have something to work on.

We saw earlier in the week, and with the reactions in the stadium that cadiaN is going through a bit of a villain arc. What are your thoughts on the whole situation and the reaction from the stadium today?

Yeah it's just how it is - some like us and some hate us. There's different reasons for it, we don't really care, we're just here to play CS. Obviously, we love the crowd who love us, because that's where we thrive and we thrive also in the booing, but it's fun either way. If people boo us, we want to shut them up and if people cheer for us, we want to be a part of every moment with them. It's fine either way, it's fun to play in these big arenas.

Your teammate, stavn, is one of the highest-rated players in this tournament. How has it been seeing his development so far this year, really coming into form, and what do you think the ceiling is for him as a player?

He is really insane, throughout the past few tournaments he has been one of the best for our team. He's matured so much this year and towards the end of last year, he has done super well and for us, he is the biggest diamond. He is everything for the team, he brings so much knowledge and so much experience, as well, even though he is so young. He can do everything, he is the specialist in my eyes.

IEM Dallas is coming up, what are your expectations looking forward to that tournament?

Yeah, it's in the future so I haven't even thought about it yet. It's going to be fun to go to America, I haven't been to Dallas once. It's going to be fun either way because we always enjoy it, we always enjoy traveling with this team and yes, of course, there's expectations for every tournament and what we want to do and accomplish, but yeah we'll talk about that when we're a bit closer.

TeSeS and the rest of Heroic won't have to wait long to be back in action, as they will soon travel to the United States for IEM Dallas which kicks off on May 30th.