Dare to Dream

Michael O'Dell and the Birmingham Salvo are one match away from their proudest moment in gaming. Oh, and $500,000 split 11 ways.

Standing in the way of the dream are the San Francisco OPTX, the underdog wildcard turned favorite in less than two weeks. In the first of our pre-final interviews Cadred sat down with ODEE for his take on the CGS so far and the final. An interview with Kat Hunter has been conducted and will be up tomorrow.

You're now in the final against the San Francisco OPTX, how confident are you going into the game?

Quite confident actually, probably more confident playing Carolina, I think we go in again as underdogs, that's the way I like it to be honest. We've got a chance to win, if our teams in certain games click then we'll win, if they don't we'll lose.

The last game was pretty intense, what did you think of the start with Bazza going down in FIFA and Sarah Lou going down in Dead or Alive?

She [Sarah] just needed to keep it close, and so did Bazza, to keep us in it. I wasn't shocked because Mystik's a fantastic player, god knows why she didn't get drafted quicker last season. Sarah did pretty well, unlucky maybe, she probably got a little bit cocky, but a 5-4 loss is not that bad. We were only two down at that stage which I felt was fine.

Counter-Strike: Source went on to pull it back for you in a big way, were you always confident they could bounce back from the defeat against Mexico City Furia?

Our team is made up of big big players with huge amounts of experience and they've all played in massive tournaments. They probably did underestimate Mexico, even though we did everything to make sure that didn't happen. A similar thing happened last year with the game against Singapore Sword, we only won 10-8, luckily the rest of the franchise pulled it out for us then like they did against Mexico. Once we won the franchise match against Mexico though there's no point to carry on, although half the team seemed to be trying to push on to beat Mexico, I was screaming out "Stack A", I didn't care what happened as we'd be giving away tactics. In the big games our guys do pull out everything, Marc's four man clutch was fantastic. We have a fantastic team, there's no doubt about that.

Forza went on to build on the momentum of Source, after a rocky start so far they seem to be continuing the run of form from the Mexico game, do you think they've come into their own?

I always knew our guys were the best pair in the world, and I still think that. Daveyskils was my number one pick last year, Picaso is fantastically fast, and so is Davey. Whoever drives against us has to get the luck to beat us, or you're going to get owned. We didn't get the luck against London, a very good team, again with Berlin, very good team. Carolina are supposed to be the best american team, we did really well, getting lucky on one of the takeouts to win 5-2, which funnily enough is exactly what we needed at the time.

Marc Mangiacapra has come under pressure recently, being accused of poor performances and not stepping it up a gear, do you think he took heart from that and used it to his advantage in his performance against Core?

Every player has a bad patch, it doesn't matter who you are. In the previous games I'd say RattlesnK wasn't playing very well compared to how he usually does. Marc had a couple of bad games, but he's a fantastic player and one of the most experienced in the UK. Having a player like that on your team it's worth it's weight in gold.

Going into the last game you only needed one round in Dead or Alive Male, did you think that Messy would get it early in the game?

The game plan was to be a little bit defensive, but obviously that didn't work. Offbeat is probably the best player in the world, only having to get one round was still a tough task, Ryan [offbeat] played really really well and he owned Messy 5-0. Then we got to overtime and Messy owned him, and that's all that counts.

Messy gets buried by a surge of Salvo players as he clinches the vital overtime. Photo; Max Silver - Cadred.org

What were you saying to Messy in between the rounds as he kept on losing round after round?

He just needed to keep his focus, it was simply that, he knew what to do. There's not a lot I can do at that point, it's down to the player. When he was 3-0 down I was thinking in my own head, "it's going to be 5-0". Messy didn't look right.

After Ryan got the 5-0 he stood up and ran around the stage a bit, I was thinking "what the hell is he doing". Messy just sat there and stared at the screen, I think he actually closed his eyes for a second, and just focused. Ryan went running round celebrating, and even when he sat back down to play there was a long delay between the last round and the overtime, he was looking around, talking to people while Messy just stared at the screen. Messy's physical appearance changed, he went out, went aggressive and won, that just caused pandemonium. It was one of the best feelings I've had in eSports

The rumors I've been hearing says that you and Core are big rivals, how did it feel to beat them?

I wouldn't say so much rivals, they're just definitely one team that we wanted to play last year, we wanted to beat them. There's no animosity between us and Core. When we came out here we made a decision to only practice against two American teams, we decided to block one American team before we came here, and we chose Carolina in the event that we may end up eventually playing them. We chose to practice against San Francisco OPTX for their console team and Dallas Venom for their source team, Core didn't like that and thought there was something weird going on, but it wasn't. It was just me gambling on not playing it and it paid off in the end. Their Counter-Strike: Source team was sort of begging us in the end, and we just didn't want to play them and it proved pretty good in the end.

You said you've been using OPTX as a practice partner, does that make the final even more interesting?

I think it's going to make it fantastically interesting, because in practice OPTX seem to take notice of practice results a lot, they seem to talk about it a lot afterwards. We don't care what the results are, personally I'm always for bad practices, because you can't learn anything unless something goes wrong. I'm not that worried, it's going to be close, but like I said whoever clicks on their games will win.

Dead or Alive 4 Female promises to be a great match up, with Sarah losing to Vanessa in the individual finals can she cause an upset?

The pressure goes onto Vanessa and can she handle it, I don't know, let's see what happens in a big big final. She's the favorite to win, she should win on paper, Sarah has nothing to lose and she's going to go for it. I'm not really worried, you've got to get some luck in big tournaments, you can't win without it. We need our players to perform and get that luck, and if we get that we'll win.

And how do you see the Source game going? Both teams seem to be on top of their game right now.

It's a good map for us [de_inferno], but it's also a good map for them. I'm really quite confident, you can never tell in CGS, it's very different than playing a game in a source tournament. It all depends on what the score is in the other games, where you are in the match, what points you need. There's different types of pressure in the CGS, I can't really explain.

I think source is going to the fourth game, so it's going to be a lot of pressure on both teams, depending on the scores.

How do you think OPTX looked against Berlin?

Berlin are stronger that the score line, but OPTX played really well. They look tough, but you'd expect it in a tournament of this stature and with this much money, you don't get easy games. There's so much at stake.

Even though Messy got the crucial round needed to win the game he did lose the overall Dead or Alive game 5-1. Can he step it up against Chris [NinjaCW]?

Yeah, and I'm hoping they underestimate him, Messy's a very good player, he won the European combine. The American Dead or Alive is a step ahead of Europe, that's for sure and it's not an excuse but the Americans should win this tournament; they've had a preseason, they've had a regular season, they've had a hell of a lot more to get ready for this, but we have the talent in Europe to do it, and I hope we can do well for the UK.

What would it mean to you to win the entire thing, not just for your team, but potentially "for Europe"?

One of my goals was to beat an American team, we've done that and there's no reason why we can't win the final. If we win that it will be fantastic, the biggest tournament I've ever won. That's why we're here, we're not here to sunbathe almost some of us are at the moment, I hope we can do that.