neaLaN: "Maybe people didn't believe in us, but we believed in ourselves"

With the struggles that Sanzhar "neaLaN" Iskhakov's Evil Geniuses roster faced during their turbulent tenure together, not many would've expected the Khazakstani IGL to have rebounded as fast as he has done with GamerLegion. Joining the BLAST.tv Paris Major finalists following the departure of Kamil "siuhy" Szkaradek, neaLaN very nearly led his new team to the playoffs of their very first tournament together at IEM Cologne. Missing out narrowly on the LANXESS arena after a 2-1 loss to Cloud9, Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore of Dust2.us talked to the former EG leader following their defeat.

How do you feel after this match?

I feel awful because I played so bad individually. Suck to lose, you know.

On the other hand, not many expected GamerLegion to advance as far as they did. Do you take solace in that in this debut?

Maybe people didn't believe in us, but we believed in ourselves. We are gonna keep going forward and working on our mistakes.

Coming out of Evil Geniuses, some don't know exactly why that team failed. With that result here, that has galvanized people to see your skill in leading a new team like this. Does it feel good to prove that it wasn't necessarily your fault?

I wouldn't say... I see my fault in that we failed in EG, yes of course. Did I prove myself right now? I would say no. I want more. I want to win trophies.

Next up is Gamers8. What are the focuses before that event?

I think we found the balance in our team right now. We want to find a new style of what we want to do in the game - that will be the main focus.

volt is the least experience and the newest addition. How do you feel about his performance?

I am proud of him, actually. To be honest, he wasn't playing the roles that he was playing right now. Now he is on the star role, but before he was on the anchor. I am proud of him in that short amount of time he proved himself and I believe and I know that he is going to keep working and being better and better.