Snappi: "Spinx hasn't been able to obtain a visa... so we might need to play [IEM Dallas] with a stand-in"

Following their heartbreaking loss to NAVI last night, Dust2.us' Dafydd Gwynn had a chance to sit down with ENCE IGL Marco "Snappi" Pfeiffer to discuss the match, the pressure of the stage, and what the future might hold for the team. During the interview, Snappi revealed the unfortunate news that ENCE's star player Lotan "Spinx" Giladi will potentially miss IEM Dallas 2022 due to visa issues.

I feel like you were one kill away quite a lot in that game versus NAVI, what do you think needs to be improved to close out those kind of games?

I think the key thing was we have a very strong mental game but today it finally hit some of us that we were actually were. We started off Nuke really bad with personal mistakes like buying the wrong grenades, throwing wrong grenades, or not following the plan and committing when we shouldn't have. We weren't in sync and part of that is on me, part of that is on the individuals. But I think we had our chances at the start of Nuke. We won the second round but then we fucked up a bit on the third round. Later we didn't follow the plan in one of the rounds and then we lost a 4v2 which led to the money running away for NAVI. We only ended up getting four T rounds when we are normally very strong on Nuke T-side team. We had the opportunities but today we made too many mistakes and against a team like NAVI you can't afford to make them.

Talking about individuals, it's still a quite young team and still relatively inexperienced, especially on this stage. Do you feel any pressure to be the veteran presence on ENCE?

I try to do my part and tell them to not focus on the crowd cheering for NAVI, to laugh it off and think that they're cheering for ENCE. But that's what you can do, try and take the pressure off. But at the end of the day I'm just proud that everyone has been able to cope with the pressure so far, this was a different kind of match, everyone was chanting in a full arena. It was honestly crazy in the arena today, but it was amazing playing in front of the crowd. I think everyone is very grateful that they had this experience even if we wanted to win. We didn't show our A game but it is what it is.

When the crowd is against you, for a team like Heroic they become the villain, but for you embrace it and it seems like the crowd was kind of changing and getting riled up for ENCE. How does that affect your mental game?

To be honest I'm probably the wrong person to ask because it was only between the maps I heard the crowd. I don't hear them in the middle of a game honestly I really do not notice them. I'm not even sure who they're cheering for most of the team. I'm probably the wrong guy to answer but it may be different for some of the guys but for me not really.

Do you think the crowd affects the game negatively, especially during clutches and other tense situations?

I think that's kind of how the game is with a crowd. In order to prevent it, first of all PGL weren't using white noise on the stage which makes it easier for players to hear. It's better for players to not have white noise because it's pretty annoying but I think using booths is ultimately the best way to avoid any kind of crowd reaction having an effect on the game. Booths is the answer but in some countries booths aren't allowed because of fire hazards so I don't really know the perfect way for it. The only thing that they obviously need to get rid of is people in the crowd yelling info or having signs, they need to be punished straight away by the crew. I don't think you can do much about the reactions.

To quickly jump back to the game, there were times where it felt like you guys could've won rounds but they slipped away. Does that come down to the mental game or what other factors come in there?

To be honest I think they just played better today. As I said maybe the pressure got to some players but can you really blame them? I think they were just on a higher level today and they won more duels, they made less mistakes, and they didn't miss utility from what I could see. That made it hard for us and we also struggled to capitalize on the rounds we were given.

What can we expect to see from ENCE in the future?

They can expect a lot obviously now, we have IEM Dallas coming up which won't be that good sadly because Spinx hasn't been able to obtain a visa for the US so far, so we might need to play with a stand-in. That's how it is, huge blow to us but apart from that, going into BLAST and Cologne people will see a very strong ENCE.

Last question, who do you see winning the Major?

That's a tough one man. If s1mple plays like s1mple played today, I think NAVI will take it and sadly destroy karrigan's dream.

ENCE, with or without Spinx, is set to head to America to play IEM Dallas 2022 on May 30th.