24-year-old Ross “aNguiSt” Pendleton has been a key member of Metizport’s VALORANT line-up since the forming of the revamped 2025 roster in January. The Englishman helped take the team to a top 4 finish in Stage 1 of VCL NORTH//EAST as well as a first place finish at Glitched Invitational 2025 in Jönköping, Sweden. As Stage 3 NORTH//EAST has reached the Playoffs stage and with Metizport ready to start playing tomorrow, we sat down for a quick interview with aNguiSt to hear his thoughts about the team’s performance so far, as well as the upcoming do-or-die stage for the remaining eight teams in the €15,000 tournament.
Metizport started off in the Lower Swiss Phase this time around after bombing out early last Split – talk me through that experience for you and the team. Was the approach any different?
For me, the second stage where we didn’t even make playoffs was an all time low in my career and not something I ever really want to experience again. Overall I wouldn’t say the team had any sort of different approach or mindset when coming into Stage 3, I just think that in the prior stage we had inconsistencies within our team environment and our practices that made us struggle to translate our level or true gameplay from praccs to officials. From Stage 2 to now though I will say our team has been experiencing their fair share of struggles, because of the kind of mental battles within the team and ourselves we have all been facing due to under-achieving. But as of now I think we are in a good place as a team and individuals compared to last stage and early this one – we all believe we can achieve our end goal of Ascension.
At one point it looked rather grim for the team in Lower Swiss, being down 1-2 after losing to Boars Gaming and Easties. How was it, being on the brink of relegation? Did anything change for the remaining two matches that you managed to win?
I wouldn’t say that anything changed for us as a team when being 1-2 in the Lower Swiss. We all knew we were better than the opponents we lost to, we just had to kick ourselves a bit and seriously lock in to make sure we didn’t get relegated. During that Lower Swiss struggle bus… I personally had a lot of fun playing and I’m sure the team did as well because those wins were big for our confidence despite who we were playing against. We had been struggling and to get over that sort of mental wall and play on a respectable level for us as a team and individuals helped a lot.
In Upper Swiss you had a cleaner sweep, running away with a 3-1 score. I want to focus on the last match versus deti ulice, a very back-and-forth game that you managed to win in the end – what do you remember from it?
The series against deti ulice was a fairly intense back and forth game but overall I would say the thing about that series that I remember the most is in both overtime games just how clutch everyone in the team were being – big rounds when it was really needed from everyone to be clutch and composed – everybody turned up and we were still having fun in the game whilst in those pressured situations which is really important at least for me.
Last month you and the team traveled to Sweden to participate in Glitched Invitatonal 2025 – a tournament you managed to win – and undergo a bootcamp thereafter. How was that experience for you? What impact did it have on the team?
Going to Sweden for Glitched and the bootcamp was overall a great experience for me and the team. I think that people can’t always comprehend the value that meeting your teammates in real life actually brings especially if they aren’t involved in esports. It was nice to win Glitched and have that experience together as a team but overall the bootcamp was the better thing for the team, basically living with each other for a week and seeing on a better or deeper level of how your teammates are as people is a good thing for chemistry and team environment.
aNguiSt and the team in Jönköping
Czester joined the squad in late May, replacing burzzy. How has it been so far? Has anything changed?
Czester joining the team in May was a good thing for us as a team to help with our inconsistencies which mainly comes down to him as a person and his personality. It’s just easier for certain people to mesh and fit into an environment than others and that is one of the main reasons we replaced burzzy – he was a great player but just not the right fit.
Last question: Playoffs start this weekend – what are your expectations? Is there any team you would like to play the most?
Expectations for Playoffs are to at least reach top 4 so we can go to Challengers EMEA where the more important part of the run will be to make Ascension. We all fully believe we can win the league and then Challenegers after to reach our goal, so that is what we are practising and playing for everyday, with that goal in mind. We have high hopes and expectations for the ending of Stage 3. I would like to play against Enterprise the most – we recently beat them in a bo1 but to win our league and face them in Ascension would be nice because I know the entire team wants to beat them. Playoffs and Challengers will be interesting to watch.
