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“Although I knew that we had a high chance of advancing, I also thought that today’s match would be tough. However, I didn’t know it would be this challenging.”

After winning a highly competitive 5 set series, C9 defeated Gambit Esports and advanced to the 2018 Worlds Group Stage. Their head coach, Reapered seemed to think that the team did not perform up to his expectations.

“Our key player, Jensen was not in his best shape. A lot of us caught a cold; some of the players had a hard time maintaining their performance. Especially, Jensen’s performance decreased significantly because he was sick.”

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Going into the Groups, Reapered said that the players should improve their individual performance. He thought that it’s easy to quickly improve on team strategy and teamwork, whereas individual performance takes quite a long time to improve. Reapered also shared his thoughts on the team’s rookie players.  

“Licorice didn’t perform up to his high expectations. Well, his performance wasn’t bad but he could have performed better. Blaber performed up to what I expected. He lacks experience, so sometimes he seemed to be panicking. Zeyzal performed better than I’ve expected. He did well on his role as a support such as initiating and vision control.”

“When we get to the Groups, these players will definitely feel pressured a lot. Telling them to not feel pressured would be useless. Although I know that feeling nervous in the Group Stage is inevitable, I’d still like to tell them to perform without pressure.”

Before wrapping up the interview, Reapered said sorry to the fans. He said that the team will improve more in the Groups and try their best to return the fans' support.

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