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The International 10 continues as teams continue to compete for a $40 million prize pool. Some of the teams have already eliminated, but those who continue to fight are still remained. One of these teams became a real discovery for the audience. Team Spirit made it to the TI10 Playoffs Upper Bracket, and soon they will be playing elimination game against the reigning TI champions – OG.
Today we talked with the manager of Team Spirit Ruslana “DkLana” Berest. She told about the preparation of the team before the match with OG and about her expectations from the upcoming fight. Ruslana also spoke about the atmosphere at The International 10.
Hello, how are you feeling before tomorrow’s game?
Hi. The mood is good. I can even say that we feel confident.
Now you have entered the top 8 of the tournament, which is a pretty good result for you. Did you complete the minimum program or did you set the bar higher for yourself?
Of course, for the organization, we have achieved the minimum result that we would like to get. Now the players set themselves the task – to break through as high as possible, we are ready to go forward.
How are the team’s moods ahead of tomorrow’s game against OG? Do you have any stress before playing with the champions?
We cannot say that their title of champions evokes any emotions in us. The guys in our team are very calm. If you’ve seen our games at the stadium and even in the practice room, you’ve seen their reaction to victory, it was pretty calm. I can’t say that we have any excitement, but we still prepared for their surprises. Their playstyle is really dangerous. They begin to play aggressively literally from the first minutes and their actions are difficult to predict. Our training is at a good level. Now we are recording our interview at 11 PM, our players are already asleep and gaining strength for tomorrow’s game.
Your captain Yaroslav “Miposhka” Naidenov said in an interview that the experience of successful trainings with Fnatic team made them feel confident. Was there any training experience with OG that made you feel the same way?
We haven’t played as much practice with OG as we did with Fnatic. We played a lot with Fnatic and over the past few weeks our CW score with them was 10:0 in our favor. During the first map, we gave them their best heroes and they lost. We had no idea what they would do in the second game when we just banned their heroes. With Fnatic, we were just playing our own Dota. We didn’t have that experience with OG, but we watched a lot of replays, especially replays from The International 10. They don’t cause any undue alarm.
As we know, The International 10 is held without the crowd, but the scene looks so epic. Is the team under pressure when they enter this big stage?
We were definitely under pressure on the first day of the playoffs when we had our first game of the tournament. Our team literally opened TI. The stage is impressive, it’s just huge. It is so huge that even the absence of the crowd is not so noticeable. All this sounds, this ovations that Valve created for TI10 is perfectly audible in the players’ booths. The organizers putted a lot of speakers that give out a powerful sound from which the stadium shudders. Of course, the first day we experienced anxiety and excitement, but we got used to it for a few days.
Last word for your fans
Thanks to those who watch us and support our team. We will try to show our best game.