zonic: "One thing we didn't want to say before we qualified is that ZywOo is sick"

Earlier this year, when Vitality announced the creation of their Danish-French superteam, many believed this squad could very well be a title contender right out of the gate. In reality, Vitality have struggled to impress in most international events despite the caliber of players that compose the squad. A second-place finish at the BLAST Premier Spring Final just a few weeks ago has shown that the team still had some life heading into the IEM Cologne Play-in.

Vitality have successfully locked in their spot in the IEM Cologne group stage, after a tough loss against Movistar Riders and a grueling victory over Sprout. After Vitality's win over Sprout, Dust2.us' Liam "Slevo" Slevin caught veteran coach Danny "zonic" Sørensen for some words on Vitality's performances in Cologne, star AWPer Mathieu "ZywOo" Herbaut, and former teammate Lukas "gla1ve" Rossander.

Making it to the main event, what's the mood like in the team after beating Sprout?

I mean, right now it's good obviously, qualifying means a lot to us, but we're also at a point where we expect to qualify and the way that we are playing right now is not good enough. I'm satisfied that we at least played better today. The matches were kind of similar in that we lost both Vertigo as the first map against both opponents. But yesterday we just crumbled after losing that game, and today we really showed character, finding our way back. But as I said before, it's not pretty and we really need to step it up.

You said you crumbled yesterday towards the end. For you as a coach, what was it like trying to get the guys to mentally reset in such a short turnover for today?

Yeah, we had a really good talk yesterday but it's hard about the mental thing and the individual level was not there yesterday. It's getting better today, but it's tough. Usually, you go home and talk about specific things on the maps that we need to fix, but we simply don't have time for that right now. It's a lot about fixing what is absolutely necessary, but not going in too deep because it's not going to help [the players]. Fixing the small things and having a good talk about how we approach the game and the roles and some of the keywords that we know work for us mentally. That helped a bit today, but we're still far from the level that we showed in the past.

The narrative around this lineup, with all the winners that are on it, yourself included, builds up to win trophies. How much frustration does that create when you go through stints like this where you're not getting results that you want?

We tried a lot with the previous team on Astralis; we had tournaments where we were just popping off from the beginning and beating all the opponents with single digits and then we crumbled in a semifinal or quarterfinal and lost. We also had really good tournaments with Astralis where we lost the game in the group stage, we didn't really play well, everything was not going for us, and then we ended up winning the tournament. So, you can also play your way into the tournament, but obviously, it's a bit frustrating. One thing that we didn't want to say before we qualified is that ZywOo is sick and is on penicillin. He is getting better day by day but he's not with us during the preparation and he's sleeping a lot and trying to recover, which is important for us. I think he might get a stage rest tomorrow, but nonetheless, he's getting better day by day and that also affects the team in some way because we centralized our playbook around him.

Prior to this event, ZywOo's stats had taken a slight fall and previously you worked with device who you set a system around him very well to create opportunities for him. Why do you think ZywOo's form has not dropped fully, but just fallen off a little bit?

I think ZywOo historically has been having some issues during the spring season and then he's been popping off later in the year. But that being said, it's also a big transformation from him. He's playing under a little bit of a different system compared to where he was, and he just needs time to adapt. Also, communication-wise, it's a big change for him so obviously, I'm patient with him and he has been improving a lot since the beginning of the year. I can definitely say that he was struggling compared to his normal level. But other than that, he's a really talented guy and he's not like anyone I've seen in a very long time, if ever. He will get there for sure.

During your time in Astralis, Magisk had a bit of a stint as an IGL and in this team, he's playing under apEX. What's it like having those two obviously very vocal voices working together at the same time?

I think it's something that you require. Magisk being on the flank, being able to call his teammates towards something he sees, like how many times they smoke where he is. Or if he sees something that he can actually also take over apEX's calling and just say "guys come back B and let's finish B". You can't really nowadays have an IGL who just has to call and micromanage everything. You need to have someone on the flank who can also take initiative; not having too many voices but to have at least two guys coming up with ideas. We also had in Astralis, even Xyp9x sometimes came with good ideas, so I think it's necessary to have one of the flanks taking a lot of initiative. That's Magisk's role now, to be this secondary caller. He did a phenomenal job in Astralis compared to never being a caller.

The main caller in Astralis was gla1ve — as we speak, I'm not actually sure if they're qualified or not. From what you've seen from them, and the system gla1ve is working under with different players and a new coach, what can you say about him as an IGL just from the outside looking in? Can you see differences from what you guys used to do together?

Obviously, we play a lot of the same tournaments; I watch them from home but don't really pay too much attention to how they play, except from when we were playing versus them. I think nowadays in Counter-Strike you need to be able to play different styles, you need sometimes to play fast, or play slow and methodical like we did on Astralis and also what they do now. I don't think it's gla1ve's calling that's their issue; in my opinion, a lot comes down to the roles in the team and having enough aggressive and passive players. That's probably my biggest concern, but I'm not too worried about the mastermind gla1ve.

Now that you've qualified for the group stage, how deep do you think you can go? Considering the kind of form you have at the moment, do you think you can bounce back and really push on now that you're past the play-in?

I think it really comes up to how we deal with this in the next couple of days if we get a good start. It was satisfying even though it was not pretty; we still showed character today because what we would have wanted was an easy game against Sprout. Just to know that it was just a bad day at the office yesterday against Movistar Riders, who definitely are the gatekeepers of tier two. You can say they are knocking on the doors to playing in bigger events and beating more top teams. But it really comes down to the mental thing; how do you approach from here and how do you reset? We know we can play good, we know we can make it to the playoffs like we did at BLAST. We need to step up and we also need to be honest with the players about the last two games, even though we beat Sprout today, we know we can play a lot better than what we're showing. Hopefully, we can do it, but it's also limited how much we can change — it works in this one — so, it's a lot about the mental thing.

With their spot in the group stage of IEM Cologne secured, zonic and the rest of Vitality will be working hard to prepare for their opening match against heavyweight international squad ENCE. The two squads are set to meet soon, with the match slated to start tomorrow at 10:00AM.