ApEX shares how they changed Vitality's approach with zonic, pays respect to XTQZZZ, and says that he's "not done yet" Interview
2023-05-21 20:42:00Vitality's IGL Dan "apEX" Madesclaire shed some light on the team's preparation for BLAST Paris Major 2023 after he brought his men to victory. In the event's closing segment, he credited previous coach XTQZZZ for his development as an IGL, explained how they tried to find a new approach with zonic and revealed that he was practicing like never before.
2022 was tough for both of us. We didn't manage to have a similar approach. The certain Astralis approach doesn't work anymore, for me. So I didn't want to do that, and he was a bit... We couldn't find our way, we wanted to play slow, not fast, because we weren't good at it, and dupreeh wasn't that entry fragger, and blah-blah-blah.
But at some point, we talked a lot together, and I said that I needed that [approach with] more fast calls a bit like GamerLegion. Because I need to go fast. As an international team, I think you need the best communication if you play too slow. And when you don't have the best English, when everything is not set up, and you have to call two things on the fly, it's way tougher to call than in your own language. So I think playing faster and making more trouble on the map is the key. You can see that with FaZe, you don't see them playing that slow.
So I was like: OK, in the French teams, I always used to call fast and try to be "in their heads." I tried to do this every time, and I think we found our way, and this year it helped the team so much. We all grew so much. <...> I'm so lucky as an IGL, I had probably the two best coaches I ever had: XTQZZZ, as I am the IGL and I am here because of him, and zonic, the coach of coaches. So, my life is pretty nice.
It seems that the mentioned restructuring happened during a certain team talk that other players mentioned in their interviews. It happened in January 2023 and probably had a significant impact on the team's development.
He also respected the team's analyst Mathieu "MaT" Leber and the sports psychologist Lars Christian Robl, saying he did a fantastic job. ApEX certainly feels he has what it takes to continue, as he has been grinding since January to keep himself in shape.
I'm not done yet. For this tournament, I did one thousand deathmatch frags per day since January 1. I haven't done this much for eight years. Every day. Maybe except Sunday, if I go somewhere, but six times a week minimum. My teammates could see it: I was grinding more than any other player because I wanted it so much. But it's not easy, of course, to be good as the IGL and perform individually.
BLAST Paris Major 2023 was held in France from May 8 to 21, with 24 attending teams fighting for a $1.25 mln prize pool. This is the last CS:GO Major tournament, as the next one will be staged in Copenhagen after transitioning to CS2.
