The Polish in-game leader commented on GamerLegion's miracle run to the Paris Major final.

Kamil "⁠siuhy⁠" Szkaradek led his team to a miracle run all the way to the grand final of the BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 grand final, defeating heavy favorites HEROIC in a nail-biting semi-final that saw GamerLegion crush the Danes on Mirage. The European mix started off their Major adventure with a 0-2 record after losses to Complexity and The MongolZ, but now are within touching distance of the trophy in a tournament that has already seen several high-profile upsets.

The 20-year-old captain briefly sat down with HLTV after GamerLegion's upset over HEROIC in the semi-final to talk about the team's run through the Major, their match against Casper "⁠cadiaN⁠" Møller's men, and their upcoming fixture on Sunday.

From 0-2 in the Challengers Stage to a Major final, how are you feeling right now?

I don't even know myself, honestly. The emotions are so high and I don't even know what to say. It's the best feeling I've ever felt in my life. It's indescribable.

Teams always look to make it as far as possible, to make the final. Realistically when you set out to play in this Major, is this where you expected to be?

Yes and no. The expectation we had was that we wanted to go into every game and make sure that we put 150% into it, and that's exactly what we were doing every day since the first day. We've progressed, as a team and as individuals, and that's why we are here today.

It was a bit of a T side masterclass from you, 27 T side rounds across the series. You had a really good read on Heroic's game, can you tell me about from your end?

I've looked into their playstyle, I've always watched them play as well, so I already know what to expect. The main thing I focus on is just making sure that my team is comfortable in these situations that I call. Without that, then we would struggle in these close rounds, but because we were comfortable it meant that we got the edge over them in the close rounds.

iM looked pretty comfortable during this entire event, was [and remained] the highest-rated player above ZywOo coming into the series. What are you doing to unlock him?

Just keep him comfortable. Give him what he needs, listen to him, and be patient. He's got great talent, he's becoming one of the best really fast and he's really good at what he's doing. You just need to give him what he needs.

How do you keep him comfortable?

Listen to him.

At the start of the series you had to veto Anubis, it was between you and Heroic as to who would get rid of that. What forced it out of you, just that they had one map played on it before?

Basically. We expected them to ban Overpass, and we just felt comfortable banning Anubis. We didn't want to risk anything and just kept it simple.

At the start of the series, they went up 5-1 on Ancient, but then you just demolished. Can you tell me about that start to the series and getting that kind of momentum?

Yeah, I think it just showed that... I think we lost five pistols in this series, five out of six, which is crazy. It's just again that every game we start, we have a slow start, and we have to bring it back together. Every game showed that we brought it back, so it's something we're used to doing. It's not good that we're losing the pistol round all the time, but we're able to come back instantly so it's really good to see.

The one pistol round you won was at the end of Mirage. It ended up being a blowout from there, so it must have been good to finally get one of those on the board, right?

Yeah, of course. We were like, let's keep it simple, don't overcomplicate things, just go headshot. Then we just played the two-on-two, and yeah, perfect.

With that win you're in the Major grand final. You're going to play against the winner of Vitality vs. Apeks. How do you feel about that, playing the final and maybe not having the crowd on your side if Vitality make it through?

I feel very good, personally. We didn't have the crowd on our side in Rio, so we have that little bit of experience [already]. But I think now that the emotions are very high, it's still important for us as players and us as a team that we focus on ourselves coming into tomorrow. Yes we can prepare for the opponents, but we also need to prepare ourselves for such a big game. If we do that correctly, the same result will happen.

There's been a lot of conversation about the experience of the teams here, especially the experience of IGLs like cadiaN. You're coming in as a "tier two" IGL, but you're able to take down these teams. Can you tell me about your ascension individually, and GamerLegion's ascension?

We've all grown really fast, and really quickly understood what is needed in tier one. What type of style we need to play, the sacrifices we need to make. It was very clear to us that for us to go further and go into tier one, fight against the tier one teams, we need to step up everything outside of the game and inside of the game.

That's exactly what we've been doing, and it's great to see such a team has such high potential, and they're actually using it. You know, cause there's a lot of teams that just don't use their potential, but here you can definitely see that we are using it.