[EXCLUSIVE] Team Vitality Sayf on moving to Vitality "I wasn't expecting to be removed from Liquid to be honest"

Valorant

27 Apr

Foo Zen-Wen

Team Vitality Saif "Sayf" Jibraeel sat down with Strafe Esports following their victory over GIANTX in the 2024 VCT EMEA Split 1 Week 4.

In the interview, he touched on their shift in mentality after the Gentle Mates loss, citing it as a driving factor in them regaining focus, his transition from Team Liquid to Vitality and his work with the new team, as well as the state of VCT EMEA and its competitiveness as a league.

[Interviewer] Hi Sayf, how are you doing?

I’m good, bro. How are you?

[Interviewer] I’m great as well, thank you. I wanted to start by asking what your gameplan approach was heading against the series against GIANTX?

Our approach was nothing any different from any other game. I’d remind the boys that we need to practice like we play and play like we practice. Because a lot of times people will stress out a lot and deviate from the plan. And that’s what we saw against Gentle Mates.

Why we lost against them is people got nervous, people stopped doing the things we usually do in scrims. And we kind of got into a no-man’s land in terms of how we approach the map.

So, for today’s matchup, we just chose to focus on the things we’ve always been working on for the past few months and remind everyone that this is our stability, and this is how we’re going to win games and we just need to follow through with our gameplan. So, that’s how we approached it.

[Interviewer] Asking specifically on Breeze. Obviously, you had an incredible performance on the map. But I wanted to ask on your preparations on the map and how much of it was just down to comfortability on the map and how much of it was just down to individual fragging power in this particular game.

I mean, I think I’d say 80% comfortability and 20% fragging power. Like if I’m comfortable, then I’ll kill people. So, I mean, I feel super confident on Breeze, and I think the whole team feels super confident on Breeze.

[Interviewer] Next week, you’ll be playing against KOI. Another team that’s currently going winless and needs to win to have a chance at Playoffs. Is the approach going to similar to today’s game?

Yeah, that’s definitely the approach we’re going to take for KOI as well. Obviously, we do our homework, but the main plan is to just say focused on what we need to do. It’s pretty much it.

[Interviewer] Last year, we saw you playing a lot of the duelist roles on Team Liquid. Now you’ve transitioned to the sentinel role. What exactly was the sort of catalyst for you to transition over?

I guess I just felt like there was a lot less, let’s say opportunities, to play duelist in teams that I wanted to play in. And I felt like the only chance for me to show people my skill and what I can do and how many different agents and showing them that my agent pool is wide, that I know how to approach things, not just sending it in every round and killing people, that I’m actually a smart player. And that’s kind of the reasoning behind it.

[Interviewer] We're seeing a lot more diversity in competition in Europe. Could you speak a little bit on your side of your own opinion at the level of competition in Europe currently?

I think it’s a lot higher – like the skill level – because we have meshed together people that have a lot of potential and put them under good leaderships. And the best example of that is let’s say KC for example: it’s like a lot of young blood, but also people that are very hungry and you kind of need that hunger and drive and someone more experienced to push them forwards; that being Engh, let’s say.

And we see a lot of these things happening in different teams as well, where you’re taking a lot of rookies, you’re giving them the experience and they have that hunger and drive to just become better and better and better.

So, I definitely feel like the skill level has been raised, people are coming in with new approaches. Whether it's playing as five everywhere or having two lurkers on two sides, you know.

And I think it just makes the game a lot more interesting when people are approaching it in so many different playstyles, and that’s what we have in EMEA, and that’s why every matchup is like, you don’t know who’s going to win. We’re just trying to find the best [playstyle] between the waves, and we see what sticks to the wall.

[Interviewer] I see I see. Would you characterize last year then as more of a misallocation of talent rather than just the talent in general not being as high?

Oh, yeah, definitely. I think people were just scared to make any risky decisions in signing people, so they went for safe bets. People that were pretty much established, but not necessarily meaning that they are the best fit for that team or that they're doing the work that needs to be done, let’s say so. I think it's a very good idea that we brought new people into VCT EMEA and that we're getting to see this talent all over the league.

[Interviewer] Okay. Can you also speak a little bit on your departure from Liquid and the motivation for it as well as joining this new Vitality project and sort of yours and this team's approach I guess to creating this project and how you guys are running it?

I wasn't expecting to be removed from Liquid to be honest. It was not a decision that I made myself. It was not me saying that I want to leave the roster.

I was put on the bench, and I was put up for transfer by the organization and you know, I completely respect their decision. There are no hard feelings there. There was no specific reasoning. I guess they just didn't envision me in the next iteration of their roster, which is understandable.

I guess they had some plan, and you know at the end of the day. It's whatever happened, happened. And it's completely fine that way.

And why I joined Vitality is because I know that the staff here will take care of me and that the players around me are willing to see the game in, let's say, in a way that I envision it. And it's not that I'm enforcing my own ideology on people. It's rather I give them small adjustments to the current game plan, which obviously work on official.

This is why we have three rookies: Cender being a very new IGL by the way. Before we had Kicks and runner, they’ve never played in Tier 1 before. They've been playing some, I don't know, regional league whatever, but they've become good players. They've become hardened players. They know what they need to do within their roles. They've improved as players, and this is what I'm trying to bring in.

It only works if I have people that are willing to listen. And this is what I thought would happen if I just joined Vitality, and I made sure I had some new blood. So that I can mold them into better and better players until they surpass me at some point.

[Interviewer] I see, I see. So, you've self-taken on the - what's the word - sort of the leadership role on this roster in a sense where you want to guide and mold these new talents? That's what you're saying. I see. Okay last question this this week was also your super week. What was the preparation like sort of mentality knowing that you guys would be playing two games in one week? Was there extra fatigue extra practices that you guys put into sort of get through this hump?

It felt like we relaxed a bit after we won those two games against Futbolist (FUT Esports) and Heretics. I feel like people were not abiding by the ‘we are athletes’ standard. “We are esports athletes. We need to conduct ourselves in XYZ ways. We need to practice in this way.”

We kind of like started relaxing a bit. And obviously it’s my fault for not reinforcing the standards we have for ourselves as a team. Yeah, and that’s why we saw what happened against Gentle Mates, that first match. But we obviously fixed that the day after.

Team Vitality will next play against KOI. This is both team's final game of regular season in Split 1. If KOI wins, Vitality might not make Playoffs. If Vitality wins, they will be in a good position to secure their first ever Playoffs appearance in VCT EMEA.

For all the latest updates on the LEC, follow the official VCT EMEA Twitter/X here. You can also follow along with the action on the Strafe Android and iOS apps, as well as the Strafe site.

Credit: Michal Konkol/Riot Games

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