"Winning it for the UK is a Massive Thing"

When Birmingham Salvo mobbed the stage amidst the confetti and television cameras I stood in the press gallery not quite believing what I was seeing. Birmingham Salvo had come up against the odds and perhaps most importantly, won a worldwide event as a British team.

Instead of rambling on about how proud this makes me, because frankly I’m really not patriotic enough to do that ( I’ll link you to ReDeYe’s article on the matter), I’m posting an interview taken moments after the final with the mastermind behind the team, Michael “ODEE” O’Dell.

You may choose to moan that this is the second spotlight interview with O’Dell in short succession but when you’ve just won the biggest prize in gaming, despite this being only the fifth game of the season for your team, you deserve some special recognition.

FINAL

CS:S

FZA

FIFA

DOAF

DOAM

SCORE

Birmingham Salvo

8

5

2

2

5

22

San Francisco OPTX

4

2

1

5

3

15

ODEE stands proud after the win. Photo; Max Silver - Cadred.org

Congratulations on becoming the first non-American team to win, what exactly are you feeling right now?

I’m so happy it’s unbelievable; it hasn’t quite sunk in yet. It’s just a crazy strange feeling; months of months of hard work, mainly by the players with me doing a lot of shouting. I’m just so happy; we’ve come and done what people didn’t expect us to do.

Which players surprised you tonight?

Messy just blew my mind; I still can’t believe he didn’t stand up when he won. He was so focused, and in the zone, exactly where we wanted him to be; he pulled out a 5-3 victory against one of the best players in the world.

Sarah Lou getting 2 rounds off Vanessa was a big big bonus.

Bazza finally with a win, but that should have happened anyway to be honest.

The drivers set us up for the win, if we won 6-1 or 5-2 I knew we would go on to win the match. If the match had been 4-3, it would have been extremely tricky. That’s taking nothing away from San Francisco, they’re a classy team and if they had a good start they would have rolled us.

Your Forza pair won the MVP [Most Valuable Player] award for the entire tournament, if you had to select a different MVP who would it be and why?

I’d have to look at Counter-Strike when I get back, I didn’t get a chance to see what happened, although obviously it was a shortened version tonight. The whole team is the MVP as far I’m concerned, without one another they wouldn’t have won this thing, and they pulled through for each other.

You just won your share of $500,000 [$50,000], is this your biggest ever win?

Personally yes, just about. That’s a bonus, winning the trophy is the main thing. This is my job and I love it, this is what we came to do and we’ve done it. Right now I can have a holiday for a little bit!

Next season you face immense pressure as the number one team in the world, how do you stay on top?

It’s like all gaming; you’ve got to keep at it by practicing and reinventing your ideas. You simply can’t be static in gaming as people will catch up and overtake you. I’ve got lots of years of management behind me and we’ll see how we’ll go, keeping rolling and won’t be static.

No one expected you to win, how does it feel to prove everyone wrong and possibly more importantly win it for “England”?

Winning it for the UK is a massive thing that puts us on the gaming map again. We’ve had a good couple of years in the UK for gaming and it shows you can’t underestimate any team, whatever level wherever you are. If you underestimate a team you deserve to lose. I’m not saying San Francisco underestimated us but we came out firing today and there was nothing they could do.

Is this your best moment in gaming?

Definitely, I just won half a million dollars, a giant trophy and a huge cheque that’s going to be hard to get home. CGS is the best thing that’s happened to gaming in the last 9 years. It’s developing and pushing gaming into the mainstream.