VIT Derke: "Ever since London a lot of things been going wrong and you cannot point out why for some reason"

The biggest surprise of the VCT EMEA Stage 2 playoffs was undoubtedly Team Vitality’s elimination after just two matches. The French team fell to Fire Flux Esports on Saturday evening, temporarily putting their hopes of qualifying for VALORANT Champions at risk.

Fortunately for the French side, Fire Flux followed up their victory by defeating BBL Esports the following day, thereby directly securing Vitality’s qualification for Champions. Before that, following his team’s defeat, Nikita “Derke” Sirmitev spoke to Sheep Esports about their elimination.

Nikita “Derke” Sirmitev: “I mean, shit, because we lost and I feel like we should have closed out the game on Ascent. The ending of it didn't go our way, and then we go to Split, and a lot of things don't go our way. It feels like they prepared way better against us than we did against them for the Split map, exactly.

Derke: It’s pretty similar. Against Enterprise, I feel like we were full troll for some reason. I don't know what was happening; it was just very uncomfortable. And then going into this match, it felt a little better because we just prepared for it; we knew it could go weird and stuff and that it was going to be uncomfortable because we did not play that much against Turkish teams like this, with this kind of more aggressive style and stuff, and we just don't know what they're doing. But personally, I felt way more comfortable than I did against Enterprise. It’s like map one and map two were good, but in map three I sucked again. But a lot of times, I die, and I'm just thinking that for half of them, maybe I played bad, but the other half I'm just getting outplayed to the point where it's like whatever I will do in the world, that will not change it.

So it just feels a bit annoying to be in that kind of situation, like with our B round on Split, for example, where I throw the wall and try to prod more, and then I get spammed by Odin. Rounds like this, someone kills me full slide, or, I don't know, sometimes I just go in for a trade and it's fine. It just feels like I couldn’t even play the game. So that's why I also think like with the Odin and stuff, I haven't seen someone use it like that. So I think it's a good buy for them and fair play to that too.

Derke: Not really, we were trying to fix some sorts of map pool, then some maps changed also compared to previously, so we had to prepare stuff for that. But unfortunately we come in playoffs and we didn't get to show what we prepared, which kind of sucks, I'll be real, because it's like three weeks for that, and you're excited to kind of show it and stuff, and for some reason you can't. And you go into the match and it's like these teams are very warmed up because they played a lot in Play-Ins.

I think these Tier 2 teams especially are just more hungry because they didn't get to enjoy the crowd. For them, going even to the stage or having a chance to play in this is big, while we're mostly chasing like points and play one or two times per week, skip Play-Ins and have like a three-week break. That's why it's a bit annoying. Maybe Play-Ins would have been better just for experience, just getting warmed up, but I don't know. I cannot say for sure.

Derke: Yeah, Tier 2 are 100% better than NA and APAC and whatever, I think. It mostly comes because we have a lot of players with experience that are still playing Tier 2. Like, we just played Batu (Mehmet Batu "batujnax" Özaslan), and he played last year in VCT. In Enterprise there's like paTiTek (Patryk Fabrowski), Magnum (Martin Peňkov), like a lot of kinds of players that have been playing even like in the Frankfurt team; there's like MONSTEERR (Ondřej Petrů) who used to play, Fizzy (David Figueiredo) who was always so very close to becoming a Tier 1 player and stuff. And there are a lot of players like that.

I feel like it comes from what I've been saying a lot in the interviews even before that; the problem with EMEA during franchising was, especially at the start of franchising when they didn't change a lot of the rules, it was split into a lot of sub-regions. You had the French League, Spanish League, then you had like Nordic, DACH, Turkey and stuff, maybe I missed some, you know. And there's a lot of players, and because people had to be like, “Okay, you have to lock your roster, you need to have three players from the same region,” a lot of teams could not make, like, a very strong team and stuff.

And I feel like people were developing a lot still in those regions. We had six or seven regions where people could develop their talent. And I feel like now when that kind of lock goes out and people can build whatever they want, they can build very strong teams. So for me, I kind of felt like there's not that much of a gap, especially because, like, even last year or two years before when you were playing against some Tier 2 teams, you could see there were some of them who were stronger than Tier 1 teams. Like it happened with BBL, specifically last year, and there are a lot of examples like that.

Derke: It sucks because I don't want to miss second Champs, especially in Shanghai, because I really wanted to go to China and stuff. A lot of things went wrong in the game and outside of the game. I'll just be real, it's like trying to put so many hours into fixing things or kind of like putting hours into it and just every day thinking about the game and stuff. It kind of sucks because I feel like I've put in a lot of work, especially since last week too. I've been doing even more, with a lot of personal goals outside of the game, like in life. And then I give this kind of shit performance. It feels very shitty, but that's just life and it happens, so can't really change it.

It's like ever since London, a lot of things been going wrong, and you cannot point out why for some reason. I cannot find a way to fix it. And then on top of that, a lot of struggles outside of the game aspects, in my personal life or something, kind of hit at the same time. And I don't know, it feels hard because it's like I could not control anything, you know? And the things I could control, I felt like I tried my best but also didn't go my way. So I don't know, I guess I'll have maybe a lot of time to think about it and figure it out, because it will be nice. But other than that, we'll see. It's not that deep. I think I'll find out.”