FaZe Clan rifler Russel “Twistzz” Van Dulken left no room for interpretation as he openly slammed BLAST for their Spring Final schedule
Having advanced from the group stage, FaZe stands at a critical juncture in the BLAST Premier Spring Final, as they gear up to face Vitality in a must-win encounter in the quarterfinals.
We’re athletes and try our best no matter the conditions but to have a schedule that can put teams in this position is bullshit. Imagine if C9 and vitality went 3 maps, our bo3 would start at 11pm most likely, Should be treated like humans first.
— Russel van Dulken (@Twistzz) June 9, 2023
FaZe claimed the runner-up position in Group B after a 2-0 defeat to Heroic in the winners’ match. The series continued past midnight due to the tournament’s packed group stage, which consisted of four best-of-three series per day.
As the three previous matches were fiercely competitive, with two of them requiring all games to determine a winner, the FaZe versus Vitality series encountered multiple hours of delay, commencing close to 10 pm. While extending his congratulations to Heroic, Twistzz didn’t hold back in expressing his strong dissatisfaction with the scheduling that could place teams in such a disadvantageous position, labeling it as unacceptable.
In an effort to lighten the players’ workload, the Counter-Strike Professional Players’ Association (CSPPA) and ESL forged an agreement in August 2020, which included discussions on tournament scheduling. They notably focused on adjusting match start times to prevent games from extending past midnight.
Twistzz pointed out that, unlike ESL, there is no existing agreement between the CSPPA and BLAST. He highlighted that in the previous year’s Spring and Fall Finals, the group stage featured four matches per day as well.
Twistzz is among the players who have been vocal about the issue of burnout as the tournament season nears its end (with the player break starting after the BLAST event). In late April, after FaZe’s elimination from IEM Rio, he openly confessed to feeling “exhausted” following a few intense weeks during which the team had to fight their way through the last-chance qualifier for the BLAST Paris Major. The 23-year-old shared the challenges of coping with inadequate sleep and loss of appetite due to high-pressure circumstances.
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