ZywOo speaks about his childhood memories of Counter-Strike and first LAN event
In an exclusive interview with Cs.Money, the French AWPer talked about his childhood and how he found his way into the world of Counter-Strike.
One of the best CS:GO players in the world, Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut, has been competing at the highest level of competition for more than six years and is probably the only player in the circuit who is often being compared to Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev.
The French juggernaut burst onto the scene back in 2018 and quickly rose to the upper echelons of the Counter-Strike world, becoming the best CS:GO player of the year twice in a row: 2019 and 2020. ZywOo was born on the very day of Counter-Strike’s first ever retail release and has long been heralded as the savior of French Counter-Strike.
So, how did the Frenchman even get into Counter-Strike? During a recent interview with Cs.Money, ZywOo spoke about his childhood memories of the game and revealed how he got into Counter-Strike as a child.
“I started with Counter-Strike: Source. My brother and my cousin played this game. They went to a cyber café together in France. After that, my brother bought his first PC, and that’s how I saw the game: I was playing with my brother, and he was playing CS: Source. I was like, “What the f*** is this game?” I was seven years old. <Laughing> And I started to play at seven years old because I wanted to play this game. Maybe also because it was the first game on our computer. Maybe if my brother played Call of Duty, I could’ve become a CoD professional,” the Frenchman said while laughing.
He continued on by talking about his first-ever LAN event, where his opponents couldn’t believe they lost against a child.
I think I was nine years old at my first LAN, two years after I saw the game for the first time. There was a small tournament in my city named Microlan or something. And all my family and cousins were going to this LAN, so I went with them. My mom said to my brother, “Be careful of your little brother because he’s really young!” All the people there were almost 20, 22. And I was really young.
I remember I played against one team and I was maybe nine or ten and my brother said I rekt them. I didn’t know the meaning, but my brother said I rekt them. And people were coming to me: “Who is ZywOo, who is it?” I was nine, and I said, “It’s me!” You know, with my childish voice, and they were all shocked. Like, “What the f***?! We lost a game to a kid, nine years old!” This anecdote is really funny.
