Cxzi fancies Marsborne's Major chances "as long as we do the bare minimum"

Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore spoke with Marsborne's Danny "Cxzi" Strzelczyk at FRAG Miami 2 after his team's win against Reign Above. Cxzi spoke about the quality of play at the tournament, the addition of Ian "motm" Hardy to Marsborne, and his side's chances of making the IEM Cologne Major 2026.

The full interview may be found below in video format, with a full transcription underneath. All questions and answers have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

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Easy win over Reign Above, how are you feeling coming out of that game?

A little tired, we all are, but that's ok, we had to get through it. We're ready for tomorrow.

Earlier today, you took on NRG and that was a really close game. We saw some good things from you, very winnable game for you guys. What do you think went wrong to make the upset not possible?

Just time, we've only had two practices with motm, we haven't even gone over close to everything that we have. I think it's just going to take some time. He's catching up to what we had. [NRG] are still coming out of their break, at moments you can see that we're coming out of our break. I think it's going to be like that for this tournament, a lot of teams are going to be slowly getting crispier and better as time goes on.

We heard that viz had to step down due to unfortunate family circumstances which led motm to return to the squad. When did you learn motm would be returning to Marsborne?

I don't know how it all went down, I knew that we needed someone and suggested motm because we already have him. There was no one else that I saw that would be at least decent enough to fill the role. He knew for a while, we just didn't have time to practice because of the holidays.

Right now, is he playing viz's positions because of the lack of time you've had with him or is he playing something more akin to the roles he played when he was last on the team under WolfY?

We switched spots on some maps, I don't know exactly which maps have changed.

You said you rate him as a player and you're happy to have him in the squad, does that mean you didn't really look at anyone else?

Yeah, chop and I played with motm before on that Undone team and I know he was in the roster before so it made sense to use him. I think how WolfY used to call was not something that he was super comfortable with but I can tell at times he's very comfortable with how we're playing. motm is really good when he's comfortable.

Unfortunately, Lucid wasn't able to make it to Miami, is the plan for him to go with you guys to fl0m LAN next week?

Yeah, he'll be at fl0m LAN next week.

Ok, that's good to hear. Do you feel the difference here at LAN without having your coach behind you?

It impacts us a little bit. When I can't come up with something or if I need some extra time, he would usually have a call that works. That's an important thing for a coach, when I do need him, he has that one call that will get us back into gear. We missed that today but I did a good job overcoming that, at the same time. When things were going wrong I was able to come up with something. Train was a good example, we were down 6-1 and then able to pull out four or five rounds at the end of the half.

This is a pretty stacked event overall but so far you have been able to avoid playing any Euorpean teams or Sharks, the Brazilian squad. How do you feel you'll stack up against them when the time comes to play them?

I'm not too worried about any of them.

Where does that confidence come from? Are you guys feeling it right now, are you well prepped for them?

No one's here with a full roster and everybody just came off a player break so it's anybody's tournament. Like I said, it's going to be scrappy. I think that, whatever happens tomorrow, I could see any team winning it.

With that in mind, you're obvisously looking for a deep run here, then you're head immediately to fl0m LAN, which could give you guys a lot of VRS points. Assuming you do that, of course you're targeting going to Cologne.

Will doing well at these events change your schedule, considering you want to gain VRS points and hold onto them?

If we win quarters and go to semis and go to the third place deciders then get a couple wins at fl0m LAN, we theoretically don't have to play the rest of the season because we would have over 1300 points and why risk the points if we don't need to?

Do you think that's risky at all, though? What would you do if you guys were in that situation, would you just not play or be very selective about what you would play? There's the risk of your match fitness decreasing ahead of Cologne. Is that something you've discussed within the team?

I've looked at how much our decay would be and with all the other factors, as long as we go to the upcoming LAN events, we'll be fine. There's York, obviously fl0m LAN, then another one in Washington. As long as we go to all three and do the bare minimum, win the group, go to playoffs, we should be fine if we have a good fl0m LAN or make a deep run here.

Marsborne would end up falling to M80 in the quarterfinals at FRAG Miami 2.