The first day of the BLAST Premier Spring Finals playoffs has come to a close. The home crowd were rooting for Vitality in the first game and weren’t disappointed as Will “mezii” Merriman and company closed out against FaZe 2-1 despite a rocky start. Tomorrow the Brits will come out in full-force as Vitality takes on Spirit and NAVI face off against Virtus.Pro.
UKCSGO were able to grab Shahar “flameZ” Shushan after the victory and speak to the rifler about Vitality’s bounce-back ability, being in London and his favourite British slang.
What a win, you went down on the first map how were you able to bounce back?
The first map we lost and it felt as if we didn’t give a fuck. We just lost and didn’t give our energy and kept saying “yeah we could have done this” instead of doing this in the moment. For the second map we just came back and we said “guys we need to wake up, we are not even playing. We are not even playing in this game. We let them do what they want and we are not going to win this game.”
So for the second map we said “guys we have nothing to talk about, we didn’t play our game, the individuals didn’t show up.” So we just gave ourselves a slap in the face and came to the second map which was way more competitive. Then for the third map, obviously we had a good performance and the team had a lot of energy. That was really important.
The energy was clearly there, you were bringing the hype. After you got that 4k on Mirage, were you certain that you were going to win?
Nah you are never certain you are going to win even if its 12-1, so I was mostly happy that we won the round. I felt like a lot that round because everybody is coming out of every corner and I get the jump shot. As a player, for myself at least, that’s what I like. Where situations are very chaotic and I handle them really well and that was one of those. So I’m very happy with the situation, it obviously gave me more energy to keeping pushing. As you can hear my voice is a little ill, but I still have the energy. Everybody is pushing and complimenting me, that’s how it was.
You’ve played in the UK before-
Of course I’m half British [laughs].
Do you feel like the crowds behind you? Do you feel like you are the home favourites despite only having one UK player?
The thing is I still haven’t experienced England because the stage was with slim numbers compared to tomorrow, but nevertheless I really like the English culture, the English scene. I’m not familiar with it so much, but I’ve played with a lot of English players and I really like the English fans when I played in Endpoint. That was a big thing for me, it was the first step in my career and a very large step. So even if the fans go against us I’m really happy to be a part of this.
I know you love one specific thing about the UK, so what’s your favourite UK slang?
Can I swear?
Yeah of course.
There is two: “Wagwan pussio” and “stay safe mate”.
