vinS: "I'm not going to lie, making progress in NA is hard"

Wildcard made the news earlier this year with the decision to transition away from an NA lineup to one featuring an international constellation of South African, Polish, and Swedish players. Among those who joined Wildcard's rank is Vincent "vinS" Jozefiak, who made the transition to the NA team after exclusively working with Polish in his career.

While the transition has proved challenging at times, vinS is confident in the progress of the roster and in the team's ability to do damage at Atlanta and abroad, even if they have to field Sebastian "fr3nd" Kuśmierz as a stand-in for Love "phzy" Smidebrant. He spoke to Dust2.us' Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore about the event, the team's expectations for the next few months, building the international Wildcard roster, and vinS' relationship with Peter "stanislaw" Jarguz, among other topics.

fr3nd played under you on ENTERPRISE, was that a big consideration when fielding him for this event?

In Poland we have strong passports so I needed to take someone from Poland because it is easy to go to NA. First guy I was thinking about was fr3nd because I know he's strong so there was no other choice.

How do you think fr3nd is going to slot into phzy's roles in the team? Will he be a natural fit or did the team have to adapt to play round him?

fr3nd is more aggressive and he likes to play on his own. phzy is the best teammate you can have as a sniper, when he's supporting, when he's playing aggressive, etc. fr3nd is focused on his role and is another type of sniper.

I hope he will fit well because he's a strong AWP player.

Looking at the team more generally you've been with Wildcard for about two months. We've seen strong results from the team in that time, how do you feel about the team at this stage?

I'm not going to lie, making progress in NA is hard but I think we're doing good. We have stanislaw who is very experienced and he's so strong as a player also individually. That's very good if your IGL is a strong player as well.

I'm happy with how we're playing, we lost only one match on normal ping because in NA we played only one match on normal ping. The rest [of the losses] we lost when the Swedes were playing from Europe. Also teams in NA weren't helping us with the servers. We are playing on the worst servers.

In the best case the Swedish guys can have 100 ping and they were making us play on 160 ping. That was hard when they were playing from Europe, but from NA we lost only one match so I'm happy overall.

What's the status with phzy's visa? Can we see him in NA soon?

For real I don't know because I'm not into that stuff with the manager so I cannot say.

It was a huge change for Wildcard to transition to an international lineup. Who was the mastermind of that change and what role did you play?

stanislaw created the whole roster. He took me, he took both Swedish players, so it's all about him and he created this roster.

How did stanislaw find you and start talking about forming this roster?

They were asking for people I have coached in the past and the players were saying good things about me so stanislaw wanted to talk with me and then we talked in Polish and it was the easiest way to go about it.

They were asking for opinions on EU coaches and the opinion of me was good I guess. Then I talked with stanislaw and he took me.

So stanislaw is fluent in Polish?

Yeah.

Has that been good for you to have someone you can culturally connect with and help you not feel isolated?

Yeah, stanislaw has been helping everyone on this team. He's the captain so I can't say he's only helping me, he's helping everyone. About our communication it has made it easier because the connection between the IGL and coach is the most important in the team.

We have a very good connection and we agree on everything. If I bring something he likes it, if he brings somethings I like it, that's too perfect and it really surprised me. I wasn't expecting that'd it would be that easy but stanislaw has been helping everyone and he trusts everyone as their captain.

You have only coached Polish teams thus far, what prompted the decision to start coaching an international team in English?

In the past I have had a few offers from the EU especially, one was from a top 15 team as an assistant coach. I declined it because I was always trying to achieve something with my Polish lineups.

That's very hard to create a good lineup in Poland because most of the best Polish players are in international lineups at the moment. I decided it's time [to go international].

The last time we saw Wildcard on LAN was EPL S20. How does the team feel about their run at EPL and does it give you confidence for Atlanta?

For sure. In EPL we had tons of problems outside of the CS. The CS wasn't the main issue there but I think we fixed all of that stuff. I'm not happy that we need to play here without phzy because it won't be a 100% [accurate] test for us, but I think we will be better and that EPL LAN was very important for us.

That first we played versus Spirit we lost twice after overtime and another close map and to beat us Spirit needed a world record from donk, that was a confidence booster.

You said the CS wasn't the problem at EPL. What did you think the team's largest issue was in Malta?

It's something inside of the team so I don't want to talk about this but we fixed it so that's the most important thing.

Looking towards Atlanta, with fr3nd as a stand-in what is the expectation for the event?

We weren't talking about it as a team but I can say that I myself my expectation for the event is the finals because I expect SAW in the finals and that should be the hardest part of this because SAW are so strong at the moment. I want to go into the final versus SAW and then we'll see.

Your opening match will be against M80 who have been Wildcard's rivals for some time. How is the team feeling about that matchup knowing the record between the two squads.

M80 is playing very good CS overall, they're playing normal CS with the normal meta, not like most of the NA teams. That will be a tough game but we beat them even with susp in Europe so we feel confident and we feel we can beat them but of course that will be harder without phzy.

I hope fr3nd will deliver and we'll win this.

All eyes are on Wildcard heading into the Americas RMR. How's the team feeling ahead of the Major qualifier?

Everyone knows that the RMR is the most important event this year. We are preparing mostly for that, and that's why I'm sad phzy isn't here because we could have tested our lineup in a normal LAN situation. But, I think we will do some damage at the RMR and I hope we will get into the Major.