flameZ on the rise of Israeli CS: “Spinx had such a good year that gave us all motivation”

OG had some question marks surrounding their form heading into the IEM Road to Rio Europe RMR as they had struggled at ESL Challenger Melbourne, losing to Chinese side Wings Up in a best-of-three. They quickly quelled any doubts as to their Major hopes though as they demonstrated much better form in Malta, flameZ leading the way with a 1.17 rating for his side as they beat Illuminar, Falcons, and Outsiders en route to securing their spot at the Major in Brazil.

In our last interview from the tournament, HLTV spoke to the stand-out Israeli rifler following OG‘s qualifying victory over Outsiders. The 19-year-old was candid and spoke at length about how the team has been faring since Abdul “⁠degster⁠” Gasanov‘s addition, and talked about overcoming his own struggles in the lineup over the last months. He also touched on the environment in the team and how it is enabling them to excel, praising all of his teammates and the management at various points for how much they contribute to making the roster gel together.

Before we get into the actual matches you played here, you’ve obviously qualified for your first Major. How did that feel, when you actually won the match?

It felt amazing, I even saw some faces crying, like NEOFRAG crying and Vladyslava [OG team manager], and you can feel that it meant a lot for us. After missing two Majors in a row, just on the brink being one match from qualifying on both occasions, it was devastating and everyone learned from these mistakes and for me it meant a lot. I came off knowing why I failed the last two RMRs and then I came in and I knew what I need to do and I told myself that as long as I do that, there’s nothing that can go wrong in how I play and how we play. I think it worked and everyone just felt amazing, like you could see the emotions, the faces, it meant a lot for everybody.

I was watching back the interview you did with Striker at BLAST, and you were talking about consistency, you mentioned you changed some stuff about the way you practiced and your game as well, to become more consistent. This event obviously you had a really good performance, so what exactly did you adjust in your routine in that sense?

Well, there are some secrets to that, so I’m not going to reveal everything. My coach also told me don’t say everything you started doing. I would say the main thing is probably putting more time into the game, and realizing it’s really important to do extra aim practice and extra demos, learn what is the meta. Basically, I’ve changed some things mentally in how I approach the game, but that thing I will keep it to myself.

I play a lot more, and I’m more invested in the team it feels like, I’m always going to talk with my teammates for extra time, conversations about life, figuring them out, getting to know them better. I think it affects my consistency, because in every moment I can trust them and know that they trust me, and that alone gives me some kind of power. It feels like I owe them and they owe me one, so I’m going to perform well for them, and vice versa.

You said during that interview as well that you had more responsibility, is that more in-game or out of game?

More in-game. The responsibility part is basically calling a lot on CT, I’m in key positions on CT. It’s obviously talking more, but everyone’s responsibility is pretty high, I would say NEOFRAG has a lot of responsibility, degster a lot of responsibility, nexa and F1KU, like everyone is very balanced I would say. It’s not like I have way more responsibility, it’s just that I need to be there for my teammates you know, as everyone else should be, but I know I feel it. I know how it feels when a player in my role is missing or lacking, like he doesn’t do his job.

I’m trying to compensate my teammates, but I would say that everyone takes a lot of responsibility, the coaches, the manager. We’re obviously playing CS, but the management staff is doing really well, our preparations are insane for every game, and nexa is doing an amazing job. We talked a lot and we worked really hard on everybody, not in-game mistakes but what we have with each other in our relationship and I think it shows up.

When did that shift in responsibility happen? We were talking to nexa after your game ended today, and he said he tried to put you into the superstar roles that he had NiKo in before, and he said it wasn’t really working out for you. He wanted you to have more impact in a secondary calling role, and now you’re saying the responsibility is a little more shared across the team, so when did that change?

At the start when joined, we still had valde and niko. niko’s communication was amazing, he could basically do everything, do anything in the game. valde was really good at those late-round situations, clutches, and I had to be the guy entry fragging, taking room like NiKo. I would say that I didn’t put a lot of work into it, that’s why it didn’t go well. I didn’t try to become better, I thought I was good enough even though I was ‘eh,’ I was average and fine with being mediocre in a sense, which was really bad for me.

Right now it didn’t shift, it just felt correct when degster joined the team, like we knew what everyone has to offer kind of thing. With mantuu it was kind of different, because mantuu was always like… first of all, the English part kind of shifted everyone in responsibility, and mantuu is missing so we kinda got hit in the English department when mantuu left. When degster joined the team, degster knows what he wants to do, he has a set idea, so we all knew what we want from each other, what we can gain and stuff. With mantuu I didn’t feel like I had the same responsibility. mantuu is an AWPer that is in a sense really easy to play with, he fits to the system and in all fairness, we told him to do this, and he did it, and he did it perfectly almost. I have nothing really bad to say about him, but in general I think when degster joined we saw the responsibility shift to everybody.

You were talking earlier about degster coming in as well. You spoke in that BLAST interview about what he is bringing to the team already, but I’m curious now that it’s a little longer into his time on the roster, has he taken more control of the team?

Well we want to give him more control, like we want him to become the super ultra superstar. When we played against Falcons on Mirage at this event, he actually had a lot of control, and I really liked it because it was really easy for me to follow up on him. We have a good synergy together, me and him. He’s getting there, you know what I mean?

That’s what we want from him, we want him to be the master basically, we want him to be what we can call our s1mple, some sort of ZywOo in a sense. What I want to achieve for myself is that he is not going to play alone, we’re not going to have a team that he is the only one on the server so we need to help him and we need to show up, and I think our skill fits that. He will take control obviously because that is his role and that’s how we want him in the role, and I think that’s completely fine.

You mentioned already how much you all talk as a team outside the server and having a more relational environment together, going out to the bar after matches as well. When I’ve been around after your matches, I’ve seen you’re all always talking about the game, you’re talking about a round that happened, or the way you played a situation. How does that effect how invested in the lineup you are, how do you feel about the team?

First of all, I really like it because it feels weird sometimes when you win like, 2-1 against Outsiders, and we leave the booth and instantly we see kakafu, our assistant coach, and instantly we tell him like, ‘yo, but this round we made a mistake,’ and we instantly start talking about this even though we need to celebrate, right? I would say I’m really invested, and just helps me figure out my emotions, or control them, because we always have that one thing we need to focus about, which is CS.

Sometimes we would win those matches and we would talk about those matches, but we would have a lot of fun talking about those matches even though we made… like you always make mistakes and you can always improve, but we still improve while improving our relationship. I would kind of give it to kakafu and Casper, the coaches, they’re doing an amazing job controlling the team and also making the structure very fun to be in. All the management is basically doing that, even Vladyslava, everyone is basically letting us do what we want, we’re really free in that sense.

I feel very invested just because I feel like the coaches and the management trusts the players a lot, and trusts me, so I don’t feel like not doing a thing I want to do if the team is not feeling well. We just want to talk about it instead of letting it be on someone’s mind and just leaving it, we’re going to get fucked by it later right? The reason that makes me more invested is just that we are really close together, and we know what is the main goal, to focus on CS:GO, but we make it also improving as human beings and being good teammates for each other and friends, it makes me really happy.

Talking about those kind of conversations and improving at CS, coming into this tournament you played in [ESL Challenger] Melbourne, and you lost to a Chinese team, Wings Up-

Yeah yeah, [laughs]. FUCK.

What was that like for you coming out of that to come here?

That game, I took a piece of my brain and I just threw it in Australia far away from reach, and I never want to hear about that game again. I would say the excuses are pretty fair, like I came to this tournament with the mindset of I will play a lot and I will do my very best, and we didn’t get bootcamp PCs. We didn’t get any PCs to prac on, which every team had that thing ongoing. I didn’t know jetlag effects you that much, I couldn’t sleep all night, degster couldn’t sleep, it was really rough going into this tournament.

I would say that we actually took it really well because we put it aside, we knew it affected us in the long-run because we don’t have the opportunity to qualify to Pro League, but on the other end we didn’t have the circumstances that we’re good in. Obviously we need to improve on getting better out of the comfort zone, but it was just a mess kind of thing, like we played and we didn’t play our game, the communication wasn’t on point. It’s one of those games where we went outside and we said like, ‘we lost to them, but we keep our eyes ahead and that’s it, we cannot do anything alright?’

That is with every game, but the Wings Up match we just lost. They played really well in my opinion, they surprised us. They were also three times more on point than the games I watched them play after us, but it was also kind of our bad, we didn’t play CS, we didn’t do the things we talked about, the prep was good but we didn’t stick to it. We were not focused and I think we can blame it on the circumstances outside, but it obviously starts inside and we learned what we needed to learn from that event which was important.

What do you feel like you learned from that event?

Well, we learned that we… well like, we have a ‘flame box’ kind of thing. We have a box that when someone wants to complain, he complains and we do something with it, but after he complains he cannot cry about it. It just leaves his brain, you give the responsibility to someone else. That’s how we kinda figured it should be.

I would say we learned a lot about playing against the underdog, how to approach these games, which is pretty simple. You just need to play your game, which will always be better if you’re the better team, but we came with a different approach, maybe we even disrespected them a little bit. We didn’t expect the CS they would bring us, and we lost to them on one of our best maps, Ancient, it was a surprise for me. Then we left that game and I was like, ‘well, we’re going to win the second map,’ and then they kept winning you know? [laughs]

The pressure got to us, but we learned a lot about prepping for those matches and how to approach an underdog match which is really important. Like this event we played against MOUZ, they were the favorite, but Falcons and Illuminar were really important matches and I think Wings Up helped us win that.

The Outsiders game you played today, you had a pretty big lead on the T side of Ancient but didn’t close it out, what happened?

We picked Ancient and they were leading 5-0, then we came back and we went like 9-6. Then again I think we won, and then it just slowly went down. That’s the games where I feel like we didn’t play our game, but mainly we didn’t adapt. In games you have to adapt to what is happening, and that was my mistake. Why they were winning was something that was in front of me and I didn’t take responsibility over it in this match, and we lost Ancient because of it.

We come with preparation where we know what we need to do against them, the coaches do an amazing job and we know basically everything we need to do. It works out, but sometimes the players take it to their own kind of thing, and I took it to my own, like how I want to approach them mid-game and that is why it failed. The Ancient game I would say it’s because of me, because I took control where I didn’t need to.

I did want to talk a little bit about how F1KU and NEOFRAG are integrating into the team. It’s been talked about previously but the dynamic must have shifted a bit since degster came in, so how is it playing with them now?

F1KU is that kind of a guy that I cannot… he’s a good friend of mine, both of them are really good friends of mine, we’re in a very good relationship. I appreciate that a lot, having that in a CS team with people from different countries and different cultures. In-game it feels like we’re very emotional, so when things go bad or well, we follow that, no matter what happened one month ago, one week ago, the game before.

With F1KU and NEOFRAG, we gained so much because we gained what we needed, we want to play to CS now. Like everyone is in the bootcamp room right now playing CS as me and you do this interview. I feel like everyone is just really invested in the game, which helps a lot.

NEOFRAG is so good, and I cannot explain or put my finger on why at the start when degster joined it didn’t go as well for him, but I always believe in him and believed in him. The way that he is playing the game is just really well in my opinion, like his movement, you cannot go wrong with that. I just thought we needed more time and I think he played really well this event and he would get back into it as I believed.

F1KU is the kind of guy that is very rational, he doesn’t get affected by emotions, it’s very positive. Whenever we play a match or whatever, he’s very good. They’re both really good somehow. When I joined OG with Aleksi ages ago, I was very stressed and panicked in those 14-14 Major qualifying matches, but they’re not. They’re really solid at controlling their emotions, they know their bodies well, they know whatever they need to do in order to win, they know the responsibility. In some way I gain a lot of confidence from them coming to the team, and also Abdul, degster, is giving a lot of confidence.

I feel like we’re all around the same generational age, and we’re very different in a way because of different cultures and stuff, but we connect really well, in-game as well. We go through a lot of stuff that will help us improve. We knew the new additions were going to work from the start. They play really well, I really believe in them and everyone believes in each other, as it feels to me, so I actually have nothing negative to say about them. Even if it was me and you talking as friends, I don’t think I would have anything to tell you, like nothing. They do really well and I fucking love them.

More as an aside, but you said NEOFRAG is so good but struggled at the start of the team — is there a player that you could compare him to historically that you think he embodies?

You know, we talk about it a lot, but he kinda embodies me in a sense. When I first started in OG, or when nexa came in, I was in his roles everywhere basically. His base level is like three times better than my base level, and that’s kinda why I trust him, we had the same issues, but he figures it out way faster than me. It’s very nice to play around him cause even though he has issues, he can control and know where to fix them. He’ll come to the coach and say ‘let’s do this, let’s do this,’ and he has a lot of ideas, so it’s very easy to work with him. He knows what he wants, he really listens, and he has almost zero ego.

Obviously you’ve now qualified for the Major, there’s also Spinx over in Vitality as well, so we have two Israeli players confirmed, and there’s xertioN as well who could qualify. How do you feel the rise of Israeli Counter-Strike is going?

[Editor’s Note: MOUZ had not yet qualified for the Major at the time of the interview]

It’s so fun that Israeli players are making it. I’m not aware of how it goes in other countries, but we Israeli players are really connected. Imagine, we probably go every month to a barbeque or a movie with Spinx and nertz, xertioN, these kind of players. Everyone is really connected and I think it’s really genuine, like we want each other to win. Even when we play against each other, you’re enemies for one day that’s all, then it goes behind and you put it in the past.

About the rise of Israeli CS, I think Spinx had such a good year that gave us all motivation, we were really confident in it. xertioN is now hitting it, but if you want to go back to the roots of Israeli CS, the creator is nertz. nertz from Endpoint was basically the guy who started everything, if you ask xertioN, me, and Spinx, we probably all look up to him till today. He just made us who we are right now.

You’re not quite done playing in this event yet, there’s still going to be a match for the last Legends spot in your group. How do you feel about playing for that spot?

[EN: OG went on to lose the deciding match versus Heroic]

The opportunity to play for a Legends spot is just a big thank you gift. We just need to focus on that match, it’s important, even though I’m not sure what Legends gives you, do you get playoffs instantly?

Not the playoffs, but the main group stage of Major.

Okay. I would actually say maybe it’s even beneficial for you to be Challenger instantly, because you kind of get the warmup before, and you kinda learn how to handle the pressure while playing those matches. Obviously if we qualify to Legends it will also be amazing, if it’s the main stage of the Major then who is going to say no? It’s a good opportunity for us, but I wouldn’t say it’s such a bad thing if we lose since from the Challenger you can come with a warmup, you come solid, you come ready, you know what emotions you’re going to get.

It’s hard to say since you only just qualified today, but how do you feel about your prospects going into the Major?

I feel like we found solid ground. Our team shouldn’t think we, in a way, made something — I want to expect that everyone expected to qualify to the Major, we just had to work hard and we get it. It’s the first step, like even a 0.5 step that you need to make and we did it, and this is where it starts.

Everything you ask me right now, I don’t know what to tell you in terms of how it’s going to go, because this is where it matters. This is as we call it the ‘money time,’ we need to hit our peaks, we need to hit our primes. Based on the people I know in the team, some players might peak exactly when the Major hits because the emotions are going to go crazy, so I think it will really fit that. Our team will be ready for the Major.

Do you think it will be hard to deal with the pressure at all for you all?

It mostly matters maybe on stage, when we reach the stage it will maybe effect us. Basically the personalities are really rational and we get a good backup, the management does well in it. When you look back, there is always someone to hold you kind of thing, and you never reach the wall, you never fall down.

If it’s in-game and it’s five of us players and the coaches don’t really have any input because of the Major rules, I would say that F1KU, nexa, and degster are very calm, and me and NEOFRAG we still have it in us that we might get pressure in some situations and it might effect how we play, but I would say nexa as an IGL and leader can control us very well under pressure. I believe he can handle it if we do feel really pressured.