bodyy: “If the French teams perform, it’s going to give hope to the French scene again”

HEET have struggled to find consistent form in recent times, failing to qualify for the IEM Rio Major and having a poor showing at ESL Pro League Season 16 after adding Audric “⁠JACKZ⁠” Jug to the roster. Elisa Masters Espoo provides an opportunity for the squad to improve on their lackluster form and show improvement in their communication, something which Alexandre “⁠bodyy⁠” Pianaro pointed towards as their biggest issue in this interview.

The French side got off to a competitive start in the event by pushing both Sprout and BIG to the limit despite losing both matches, and then capitalizing on their good form to beat GamerLegion 16-8. After the match, HLTV.org spoke to bodyy, who shared insight into why the roster was struggling, the integration of JACKZ, and how they could improve for next year’s BLAST Paris Major.

In the last two games you found good control on the CT side, how were you able to continue that momentum to the T side in the second game?

With the current meta, it feels like momentum is nothing as the CT side is overpowered and coming to the T side, as long as you don’t win the pistol in the next round, I don’t feel like you have momentum from before. It was actually not a great CT, it was more 9-6 lead and every time we are not winning pistols, so you arrive into the CT side and it is a draw, you are 9-9 when you start your first gun round. So we didn’t really get that momentum that you are talking about.

For you as a team, what is your win condition?

I would say that what I’m going to say applies to both sides. Whenever we have this experience on LANs recently with JACKZ, who has just arrived on the team, we couldn’t really find our way to play and be confident because JACKZ has a style of playing and we needed something else at the time. We needed him to adapt quickly so we had to make him play roles that he was not used to playing, and he was not the fastest to be able to play these positions. We had to adapt after that LAN, so we kind of failed then.

I wouldn’t say it’s on JACKZ. It’s on the way that we built up this thing from the move, and from that we needed to see how JACKZ used to be communicating and playing. We had a way to communicate, we were really calm and confident and did not over-talk or make it loud. As long as we are quiet, confident, calm, cool, and collected I feel like we can beat whoever we want, and if as we get outside of this comfort zone it gets really different, we struggle, we stress and it gets really hard to play the game we usually play.

For me, it’s all about communication and getting into the environment that we are used to in practice and at home. I know we can reproduce it at LAN, I’m sure of that. We could not reproduce it in the past few LANs.

How have you found reproducing that environment here, at Espoo?

It was all about practicing in this matter. In practice we are playing at home so we don’t care about pressure, we don’t care about the external stuff, we just focus on our game and our communication and we just talk together and have a conversation in-game.

When we were going in LANs, it was more about who can talk over the other and make himself heard in the team. So we just practiced our listening and staying as calm as we could in practice, and then we had officials so it was a good way to practice that and we had online officials so we tried to get the most out of it. Even though we played at 11 in the morning today, I think it was fine.

The Paris Major is going to be next year, how are you guys feeling about it, are you confident that you can qualify, or is that something that is too far in the future to think about?

I think it’s really far in the future, but the longer we will go the better we are going to get. As I said before, the past few LANs were kind of a failure, we didn’t get into the right mood when we were going into them, we were not prepared enough as well. As long as we are going to keep practicing and keep playing LAN, getting experience, and playing online events I think I am going to be really confident going into the qualifiers in March. We are going to be ready.

In terms of the French scene, there have been some moves recently with HEET picking up JACKZ and Falcons have just announced kennyS joining. How are you feeling about the strength of the French scene?

I still think we are the better team, we have some strong up-and-coming players coming into light. AMANEK has been doing great in LDLC and has been teaching players quite a lot with Lambert, I think they are doing really good, but I don’t know where those players’ ceiling is, and I don’t know where they can get [to]. I don’t see them as good as the talents I have got in my team, like Djoko and Ex3rcise, I don’t think they are as good right now but maybe they will get there, I have no idea as I have never played with them.

I would say we are stuck, we are not getting much fresh blood and I don’t see the French scene as I see the Danish scene or the Russian scene, the CIS scene. I don’t see as many up-and-coming talents being as good or as prepared to come into big tournaments as they have. I think we still need time for known players or experienced players to make the best out of new players, as long as they are competitive enough. I think in the future it is going to be great, but we still need a year or two to see who else is coming into light.

Do you think the Major is going to help with that?

It might help yeah. I think that when a scene is strong, for example if the CIS scene is dominating, then CIS players are going to be looking forward to being as good as them, try to play with them, or try to give their best to get into those teams. It’s going to help them develop and have confidence in themselves and the scene, like for example the way b1t leveled up, every player is going to be hopeful to do the same as him. If the French teams perform, LDLC, Falcons, HEET, it is going to give hope and light to the French scene again because it’s been some time since we’ve been seeing dark times.

In terms of being a role model to the French scene, how does that impact you? Does it improve your game or is it added pressure?

I don’t think it’s added pressure at all, I think it’s giving us some strength to know that we are showing the way to young players. Every time I am going to play FACEIT with people they are saying “we are doing the HEET flash” or “afro peek,” and it is giving me strength and confidence that we are doing some great stuff and that we are here today trying to make the French scene good and trying to get it back on the map. So I think it’s an extra boost.

My last question, here in Espoo, what are your expectations, and what have you come here to prove?

The seeds are saying we are underdogs today and we were underdogs in the past tournaments too, but we didn’t think that way and that’s what gave us problems, like in the RMR and Pro League. So today we know we are coming in as underdogs, we are prepared.

It’s been a long time since we have not played officials. Today we played against BIG and Sprout and those games could have gone the other way, we lost both but I don’t think we were that behind them. We are coming to this tournament to give the best, to get the most out of our preparation, and we are still in progress, we are going to play two more matches, so let’s see how far we get. I think we are looking forward to play playoffs.