9Pandas midlaner Gleb "kiyotaka" Zyranov shared his thoughts on their victory over Virtus.pro in the qualifiers for The International 2024 in Dota 2. He discussed the team's preparation for the match and their experience working with coach Daniil "MeTTpuM" Gilyov.
"I’ve played in qualifiers before, so this isn't my first time," said Gleb "kiyotaka" Zyranov. "I understand that if you want to make it to The International, you have to beat every opponent. It doesn’t matter who you face; we were bound to meet VP sooner or later — either at the start or in the finals. We did thorough preparation with our drafts. We watched a lot of replays to study how VP played. We even reviewed the last finals of the qualifiers for the Riyadh Masters 2024. We just analyzed how our opponent plays and prepared accordingly. In Dota, you don’t prepare super specifically for any single opponent. We just noticed some patterns and used them in our game."
"Working with MeTTpuM is great," expressed Gleb "kiyotaka" Zyranov. "We didn’t have a coach for the last four months we were playing. Having a main coach with us at the boot camp who helps with analysis, prepares statistics, reviews games, and points out our mistakes definitely makes organizing our workflow much easier."
9Pandas defeated Virtus.pro with a 2-0 score and advanced to the upper bracket semifinals. Zyranov’s team will next face Yellow Submarine. The match is scheduled to begin at 10:00 AM Moscow time on June 16.