FaZe have had a busy time in recent weeks, flying to China for XSE Pro League before qualifying for the BLAST Bounty LAN stage with wins over EYEBALLERS and DENDELE.
A win against The MongolZ gave them a top-four spot, but David "frozen" Čerňanský wasn't pleased with the way FaZe played against the Mongolian squad.
"Relieved that we got the win, not happy about the way we got it," he told HLTV after the win.
"I think there are still so many things we need to look into and improve on in order to be where we want to be."
He also touched on his role in the FaZe rebuild, the energy within the team, and his preference for their semi-final opponents.
Congrats, you got the win in the end, but you definitely needed to work for it. How do you feel after getting the job done?
Relieved that we got the win, not happy about the way we got it. I think there are still so many things we need to look into and improve on in order to be where we want to be and where we want to get. So yeah, relieved at the moment.
I have to ask about that Nuke comeback. It was 13 rounds in a row that you won, which is special even for FaZe, the kings of comebacks. How did you get that done?
At 10-2, I told a little story. I'd been in this situation a couple of times, I remember being down 13-2 against Liquid, and everything is possible. I think we lost one round that was a little bit of a slap to the face on the CT side, where we thought, "If you want to make this close, we need to step up the communication." From that moment it was just round by round, and I think we built up the momentum, and it just rolled.
A lot of people expected you to pick Cache in the veto, but you went for Nuke instead, which now looks like the right call after you won. But do you think the game could have been easier on a different map?
Hard to say. People know what we do on Cache, everyone is looking at us, at what we're doing, what things we're bringing. So it's hard to say. I feel like the way we showed up on the T side, no matter what map we would have played, it might have gone the same way.
The team recently lost karrigan, probably the most vocal player considering he was the IGL. Now that he's gone and you've signed a couple of inexperienced guys, do you feel more responsibility to be vocal and organize things on the server?
For sure I do, but I think it's also that we all have a responsibility to speak up and come up with solutions. That's how it should be. It's still a work in progress.
This is a much different FaZe than the ones we saw previously. How is it being such a big part of this rebuild?
The pressure is there for sure. I guess I'm one of the OG members at this point, so in some way you've got to lead by example. It's different.
What's the biggest difference between this FaZe with a couple of youngsters and the one you had before with karrigan, who was kind of the dad of everyone on the team?
I think the biggest difference is that before, when I joined FaZe, I joined four guys who had already been playing together for a very long time, so it was just me trying to learn how they work, how they approach the game. Maybe I'd have some ideas here and there, but honestly, things were pretty established, and you were bringing ideas, doing moves, offering things when you could.
Now we have different players with less experience. I think in some way we still need to learn how we can help Russel [Twistzz] in terms of calling and stuff. We have so much work to do. Yeah, we are playing better than we did half a year ago, but if you look at the games, there is still so much to improve on for us.
You mentioned this youthful energy in the team. How nice is it to get a fresh slate with younger guys who weren't around for that rough patch and are just enjoying the moment?
It feels refreshing to have something new, you know? There is so much energy, all the time. For me, I'm a chill dude, I guess I'll scream when we win some good rounds. But it's just good to feel the fire and the hunger that we're bringing to the games.
You have the semis tomorrow and get to pick your opponent between MOUZ and Spirit. Is there a team you'd rather face, because I guess there is an obvious answer there?
Personally, I might go for Spirit. We came to this tournament to see where we stand, to face good teams. At the last tournament, the best opposition was top 15, top 10, so meeting a top three team will be a good test for us to see where we are and how we're going to handle it.
The MongolZ
Garidmagnai 'bLitz' Byambasuren
Sodbayar 'Techno' Munkhbold
Usukhbayar '910' Banzragch
Zolbayar 'tikuak' Chimedtseren
Dugarsuren 'DarkMeister' Ireedui
Erdenedalai 'maaRaa' Bayanbat
David 'frozen' Čerňanský
EYEBALLERS
Jesper 'JW' Wecksell
Freddy 'KRIMZ' Johansson
Max 'maxster' Jansson
Kalle 'Ro1f' Johansson
Sebastian 'dex' Samuelsson
Faruk 'pita' Pita
FaZe
David 'frozen' Čerňanský
Russel 'Twistzz' Van Dulken
Jakub 'jcobbb' Pietruszewski
Jason 'JBOEN' Boe Nielsen
Niclas 'enkay J' Krumhorn
DENDELE
Victor 'gafolo' Andrade
João 'koala' Pfeffer
Máximo 'maxxkor' Cortina
Daniel 'rdnzao' Monteiro
Danilo 'doc' Barros
Hélder 'coachi' Sancho