Snappi: "The VRS would be a really good thing if it was working as intended"

Ninjas in Pyjamas qualified to the grand finals of Fragadelphia Fragville after besting Wildcard today in the semifinals. So far their plan of heading to NA to gather up VRS points while dishing out defeats to North America has gone off without a hitch. The final piece of the puzzle for Marco "Snappi" Pfeiffer is to take down NRG in a Bo5, something he told Dust2.us' Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore he is confident his troops can pull off.

In the short interview with the Danish IGL, he discussed the LAN, Owen "smooya" Butterfield's stand-in stint, and his belief that the VRS is too forgiving to top teams.

The complete interview can be found below on YouTube and fully transcribed below. The questions and answers were slightly edited for clarity and length.

How are you feeling about the win over Wildcard and making another FRAG finals?

I'm feeling good. I just want to say the sunglasses are because I literally can't keep my eyes open after coming out of the dark room into the sun. But yeah, I'm happy because we came here for the VRS obviously and now we're in the finals. One more match to go and then we will have gotten everything we came for.

You have made the finals with smooya as a stand-in for r1nkle. Were you aware for some time that he would be unable to make the event due to visa issues and was it a consideration in whether or not you would attend?

We knew for a while that r1nkle would probably not get his [visa] with 90% certainty. So we reached out to smooya a month ago and he's great. He's the perfect stand-in and has super energy.

I would say that for me he's a guy that deserves... I know he probably already had his second chance, but he's gotten older so for sure a guy I would gamble on if I was a Top 30, Top 50 team needing an AWPer because he's super skilled and his communication is some of the best.

Looking at the big picture, how confident are you in making the Budapest Major with your results here?

We were confident [in making the Major] after Cologne but then we had a rough patch and lost a lot of games in a row and that put us in a pretty bad spot. This is why we need to come here and collect points.

I think it will come down to the StarLadder event. If we do well at StarLadder we'll probably get there and if we don't we won't. StarLadder is going to be our Major qualifier.

How do you feel about the VRS as someone who has gone through the Minors and the RMRs over the years?

I think the VRS would be a really good thing if it was working as intended. The main issue is that some of the team at the top that aren't really good are able to protect their spots by attending every single event and making it impossible [for other teams].

So far it's mainly been VRS invites to all tournaments meaning teams have a very hard time breaking in because in order to fall out of the top you essentially need to lose for six months straight.

If you just collect a few wins the punishment for losing to Vitality or G2 or NAVI is negligible at best.

Therefore those teams are safe as long as they keep getting LAN wins along the way.

Looking towards the Grand Finals showdown against NRG, how are you feeling about the FRAG Vegas rematch Bo5?

The first thing I said is we are here to win the tournament and that's how I feel about it.