righi: coldzera's mentality is "not about being a superstar [but] helping the younger guys to reach what he has achieved in his career"

Following 00 Nation's sweep versus Liquid on Dust II in the opening round at the PGL Americas RMR, their coach, João "righi" Righi, sat down with us to discuss the team's mentality, preparations, and expectations. Marcelo "coldzera" David was also a large talking point in the interview after moving down from the likes of FaZe and Complexity to a team with younger and less experienced players like Mario "malbsMd" Samayoa and Santino "try" Rigal.

You just had a monumental win against arguably the favorite, or one of the favorites to win the whole thing. What's going through your head as a team? What happened in that game for you to win?

First, it's a BO1; it's not about who are the better team or who has the better players. It's about momentum, who had the best preparation, and who comes hungry for the win. Of course, some key rounds as well; we got some clutches that could have led to a different result if they went another way but I think we are prepared for that. We know Liquid is probably the number one or number two in the tournament but we knew that we could do that. We have coldzera, as in-game leader, and he has a lot of wins in his career and he brings the confidence that we need. He was always like "guys, it's just a match, it's just a BO1. Let's do that."

You guys really maintained your momentum, and in a way stayed calm in a lot of those rounds, but when coldzera won that final 1v2 clutch you, all just exploded and were screaming. What were you guys saying to each other right after the match?

In the middle of the game we have good preparation to not over-hype. So, we are always screaming when we win but always, we take a breath and move on to the next round. That's why we don't throw round wins away; we play 100% confident, 100% full concentration. So, when coldzera won the final clutch, everyone just blew up. Everything that we keep in the entire match, we just blow up. That's the good thing about CS, when you keep these movements and then when you win, you just let it go.

Obviously you guys had been to Europe right before this. When you play against lesser teams, like Into the Breach and other teams like that, what's the difference between you on LAN here and you playing against those kinds of teams?

It's kind of annoying to play those kinds of tournaments because while we are evolving as a team from them, some teams just play YOLO CS. We are not expecting some things, for example when we are trying to play a T-side that we prepared for the RMR against one of those teams, for sure it doesn't work. Sometimes we try to play more defaults against those teams and we sometimes get lost because we have players that are younger guys, like up-and-coming talents, they never played this kind of default in CS, with a lot of flight and a lot of freestyle plays and mid-rounds calls. We just use these tournaments to play this way, so we are not using our full strat-book and that's why we are struggling a little bit. We are trying to introduce new things and give the [younger] guys the experience that they need to play those types of tournaments. We don't like to lose but we are trying to do new things and that's what we thought at the beginning. Now if we come back to them, we will be more prepared, for sure.

Moving on, what do you want to get out of this tournament?

First of all, of course, everyone wants to go to the Major but we talked about our goals for the tournament as a team and it's okay if we don't make it; we have a 17-year-old player and a 19-year-old player and we are trying to give them this new experience. They have never played on stage with big pressure. So, we are okay if we don't make it but we told them we need to take home [some lessons] even if we lose, we need to learn something. At the end of the day, we need to be able to say "I learned something" or "I had a good experience playing this tournament and we will be prepared for the long-run" because we have a long-run project. So, I'm afraid of not qualifying, of course it's our main goal, but we are good if we don't do that; we are playing without pressure and that's it.

As an experienced guy and formerly the best player in the world, how has coldzera found his role as the veteran and not necessarily the star player?

When coldzera first called me to build this project, he said "I want to guide these guys, I want to teach them everything I've learned." His mentality was already not about being a superstar player. His mentality was about helping the younger guys to reach what he has achieved in his career and that's why this is working. He knows he's an insane player but he's giving out his roles to up-and-coming talent. So, when he has this mentality, it's easy to work because everyday everyone is learning something from him and the exchange of experience is helping a lot with everything on the team. It's super good when we have a player of this caliber going on as an IGL and helping everyone on the team.

Well, there must be a reason he called you because obviously you have experience in Europe. You were Finest's coach for a while and you got to, coach some talent there and constantly play against some of the best teams in the world. That Finest roster had a bit of a Cinderella story and just did very very well. How have you bought that European experience back to South America?

To be honest, this was our hardest challenge in the team because myself and coldzera had this European experience. We worked with some European guys and some European rosters and mixes and we learned a lot about how to play this new CS that the European and CIS guys are playing. When we put this mentality of European CS in a South American team, it's hard because it has a lot of differences. In South America everyone just wants to go and shoot; they don't play matchmaking or a low-level FACEIT with some concepts of the map. They are just playing for fun and when it comes to Europe, everyone is growing or learning something so they evolve fast. This is our hardest challenge now. Myself and coldzera are trying to build the system in the team that we learned with my previous experience in Europe and with his biggest experience in Europe, which is like three years, I think. So, we are trying to get South American players to play a European system, but we don't want to lose that South American will. We say to the guys “if you don't have a smoke or utility, go and use your gun, shoot them, you are good players who have good aim, but let's try to play the map more and challenge less duels.” That's the mentality that we are trying to achieve.

Speaking of coldzera, it's very easy to constantly talk about him because he is the big name. He's played on MIBR and he's played with a lot of the Imperial guys. Has he spoken about wanting to play against Imperial, wanting to beat them, and his ex-teammates, and stuff like that?

coldzera is a guy like as his name, he's the coolest guy I've ever met because he's here with a lot of Brazilian friends and a lot of Brazilian things but he's so focused. He doesn’t want to know anything about anyone, he just wants to play CS, and that's why I think he was the best player in the world twice. He just wants to play CS, he just wants to be the best, and his team to be the best. He has this insane mentality, so, I think I've never heard something about any other thing. He just talks about our team, about how we can be, what we need to do to be better. So, he has this mentality of taking care of his own, his own friends, and his own team. That's super good and sometimes it's strange 'cause he's just so focused that you say “cold, cold”, but he's full focus, it's insane.

Talking more about focused players, how easy or difficult is it to get the new guys to play specific roles?

When you pick up some younger talent that has never played on an A-level or S-Tier level, they are good at doing something, like one thing. For example, they are so good in duels or they are amazing with helping but sometimes they don't know how to be a support or they don't know how to lurk. Nowadays, myself and coldzera have the same opinion about CS; everyone needs to know a lot of CS. The entry fraggers need to know how to lurk, for example. So at any point in the round, everything can change and they need to [be prepared]. We are trying to show them on their own POV's, on coldzera’s POV sometimes, or I'm sitting next to the guys and saying, like I'm not saying what they are doing wrong, but I'm giving them some hints and some ideas. “What do you think if you do that? You could do that, what do you think about that?” They are changing information, and that's why I think they are developing. We don't have rules for CS, you don't have things like “this is right, this is wrong.” Or “this has a lesser percentage to go well and this has a higher percentage.” We are just trying to show them how to see new things and not focus only on what they already know. Sometimes we even try telling them to be the in-game leader for a map, so they see how it goes and develop as the helper and have a good view of the game. We are doing some good stuff and we have a good psychologist and he’s helping a lot with those problems.

Just one last question; when you go 3-0 and wipe everybody out, who's going to be the other team that goes 3-0 that you face in the final game?

I think, to be honest, FURIA is the number one contender here because they were playing in the ESL Pro League semifinals on Saturday and they are in a good mood. I've seen them in the lobby and I can see they are full-confidence and it's a little bit scary because I know when a Brazilian team is full-confidence, it's hard to play against them. But, as we played against Liquid, we are doing good preparation for every game. So, could be FURIA, could be MIBR, and I think paiN is doing very well because I was next to them in the game room and they are screaming a lot and they are taking down every duel they swing, so they are a good contender as well.