Note: This article is a text port of our live interview with Sacy. The video interview can be found here.


Sentinels Sentinels North America Rank #3 TenZ Tyson Ngo Zellsis Jordan Montemurro zekken Zachary Patrone johnqt Mohamed Amine Ouarid Sacy Gustavo Rossi fell 2-0 to Shanghai winners Gen.G Gen.G Korea Rank #1 Munchkin Byeon Sang-beom (변상범) t3xture Kim Na-ra (김나라) Meteor Kim Tae-O (김태오) Lakia Kim Jong-min (김종민) Karon Kim Won-tae (김원태) in the opening match of Champions 2024. Following the match, VLR.gg had the opportunity to speak to Sentinels' Gustavo "Sacy" Rossi regarding the defeat. Despite the defeat, Sentinels have their heads held high for what lies ahead.


First off, commiserations on the loss today. The first question I'd like to ask is regarding playing the opening match here in Korea against the home crowd of Gen.G. How did it feel taking the stage today in the first Champions match, especially against the home team?

“Honestly, it's all good for me because I missed Champions last year, and after all this time, I'm here. Playing against Gen.G is always fun, I know it felt like a revenge match for them because we beat them in the Madrid finals, but it's their home crowd. It was a hard match, and they're probably the favorite team to win this tournament right now, but we still have a long way to go.”

Today's matchup was the third time you guys have played against Gen.G after the upper and grand finals of Madrid. Heading into the match, were there any thoughts in your mind about playing them once again in your opening match?

“Not really, I think Gen.G got better for sure, but they didn't change that much about their playstyle. They play the same way they did in Madrid, but in a better way.”

Sentinels came into Haven with Cypher in place of the traditional Killjoy, which hasn't been seen once in 2024. Was this change made specifically for Gen.G's Viper comp on Haven, or are there other advantages to playing Cypher on Haven over Killjoy?

“I think it was a mix of both. We thought that Cypher would be good against Gen.G, especially against a Viper comp, and Cypher is pretty good right now as the main sentinel of a team.”

How different could Haven have played out if the initial pistol round went in your favor, seeing as Sentinels were able to take four rounds in a row following Kim "Meteor" Tae-O (김태오)'s 1v2 clutch?

“The pistol would have changed a lot, but even if we lost that pistol, I thought we had control the entire game, but we lost some clutch rounds. We kinda changed our default on attack, and I feel like it's easy to say now after the game, but I felt like [changing] wasn't necessary at all, and we kinda tried to rush a lot of times. The pistol would have been a big change, but I'll be honest with you, we don't need that to win a game.”

Gen.G has tendencies to mount momentum during games after taking rounds. From round 9 on Haven and onwards, Sentinels only won one round before Gen.G reached match point. What were some of the difficulties in stopping Gen.G's momentum-heavy playstyle on Haven specifically?

“What really happened was that we couldn't stop their lurks. We got caught three or four times, which snowballed from there and it was really, really tough to deal with. We didn't need to change anything we were doing, we just needed to be more careful with our fundamentals. We should've been more ready regarding their momentum.”

Haven ended 8-13 for Sentinels with the team also going 0/3 in clutches throughout the map. What was discussed after Map 1 to help fix some errors heading into Ascent?

“As you said, the clutches were really important, especially the round with Kim "t3xture" Na-ra (김나라)'s 1v2 with three HP. After that clutch, we weren't playing as confident as we should like how we used to play. After that map, we noted that we needed to be more confident and to trust ourselves. It's like we're playing like kittens, you know? We're playing to hide instead of shooting their heads. I hope after this series, we're gonna wake up for our next match.”

The Deadlock-Cypher composition on Ascent is one quickly seeing rising popularity worldwide. From the team's experience, what value do these agents bring over the more traditional Ascent picks such as KAY/O and Cypher?

“I feel like Deadlock and Cypher is kind of the comp that counters Ascent's KAY/O meta right now. I can't say too much since we still have a match to play, so we might try to hide some stuff.”

Similar to the previous question about Gen.G's momentum on Haven, similar patterns followed on Ascent. Were there any other difficulties with countering Gen.G's momentum, or did the same problems from Haven emerge?

“I still need to watch Ascent, but right now all I can say is that we got outclassed on Ascent. They played really well, we couldn't deal with them. They also played really slow, and they played really good against Cypher and Deadlock. We weren't able to adapt during the game, so it's kind of our fault, but it's also like their job. They did their job really well.”

Gen.G is not a light team to go against. How do you or the team view the loss here today as you head into the lower bracket and are there any main takeaways?

“I'm going to go back and watch the game for sure, but we know that Gen.G played good, however we didn't play that good against them, so we didn't come against them for a real match. It's more important for us to come back for the lower match and that's it. It doesn't matter who we face, we know that they're both good teams and we've got to be ready for them.”

Lastly, despite the loss, Sentinels will now be playing one of Team Heretics Team Heretics Europe Rank #1 MiniBoo Dominykas Lukaševičius Wo0t Mert Alkan RieNs Enes Ecirli benjyfishy Benjamin David Fish Boo Ričardas Lukaševičius or FunPlus Phoenix FunPlus Phoenix China Rank #3 Autumn Kale Dunne Life Qu Donghao (瞿东豪) AAAAY Zhang Yang (张杨) BerLIN Zhang Bolin (張柏霖) Lysoar Liang Youhao (梁优好) in the lower bracket. Which team are you personally more excited to play against?

“I wish I could play Team Heretics again. It's always fun to play against them, they're a really good team. We'll see, but to play against them they need to lose, so who knows?”


Sentinels are now set to play against one of either Team Heretics Team Heretics Europe Rank #1 MiniBoo Dominykas Lukaševičius Wo0t Mert Alkan RieNs Enes Ecirli benjyfishy Benjamin David Fish Boo Ričardas Lukaševičius or FunPlus Phoenix FunPlus Phoenix China Rank #3 Autumn Kale Dunne Life Qu Donghao (瞿东豪) AAAAY Zhang Yang (张杨) BerLIN Zhang Bolin (張柏霖) Lysoar Liang Youhao (梁优好) in the lower bracket of Group B.