Dmitry Bogdanov, captain of Gambit CS:GO squad answered to some questions from hltv.org after the victorious match against Astralis, which allowed us to get to the play-offs and become quarterfinalists of ESL One Cologne.
Rivals in the group: We saw that we’re going to play two teams that we played on the last Major, so we wanted to revenge for them. And comparing to other groups our group may be a bit weaker, but we had the toughest opponents on the qualifier, so I think it’s fair not to have the toughest group here. So we thought about qualifying, it was our goal to play in play-offs and on stage, so we’re just happy with that.
Practice before the tournament: Well, we didn’t have a vacation, just 2-3 days with families and stuff, after that we started bootcamping for 5 days and went to America, where we failed really hard. But after our loss we went to the ELEAGUE studio and practiced one day more, so our expectations were okay. We knew that loss could make us stronger, even if it may sound funny to someone, but we’re happy that we made it.
Game against Astralis: They didn’t show really great game. I’m not saying that we play our best, they play our best and we beat them, no, everyone saw they were not typical Astralis. I want to credit my team, that’s it.
Future expectations: I never speak about my team, as I already said, let analysts and other speak about expectations. Our expectations are just to play the game and win. Doesn’t matter who we are going to meet from all 8 teams, I’m pretty sure those who qualified as legends are pretty good. So it’s up to us how we are going to play it, and we are just enjoying that we are going to play on stage.
