After the tough loss to Wolves Esports, Team Heretics’ head coach, Neil ‘neilzinho’ Finlay, shared his disappointment, citing poor comms and team plays as the reasons behind the early exit.
Team Heretics, the runner-ups of 2025 VCT EMEA Stage 1 and Champions 2024, are out of VALORANT Masters Toronto without a single map win.
“Every single one of these guys has the capability to be the best, and I think we just aren’t playing as a team right now, like the comms aren’t good enough, the team plays are not good enough,” neilzinho said in the post-game press conference.
The team lost its elimination match against the Chinese representative Wolves Esports, which is playing in its first-ever international VCT event.
neilzinho also expressed his frustration over the limited preparation time the team had after VCT EMEA Stage 1, especially compared to teams from other regions. However, he admitted that it doesn’t justify the poor performance and called it ‘the most embarrassing result since they started the team.’
“Sure, it’s been hard with the time to prep, but that doesn’t make us play like we have over the last couple of days and that’s the disappointing thing,” he added.
A Humbling Experience
However, as a coach, he is optimistic that the team will bounce back in the upcoming tournaments.
“It’s a massive humbling right now. We got one at Kickoff, this is even bigger and we learned from the one at Kickoff. We’re gonna do the same thing here. We know what to do, we know how we need to do it, we just aren’t doing it right now to win games when we’re on stage,” neilzinho assured.
For a full recap of the today’s action, check out Esports Insider’s article.
Team Heretics will return to the stage at the Esports World Cup, scheduled to take place in July and fans will be able to catch them in action on EWC’s official Twitch and YouTube channels.
