guerri: "Our goal is to beat [Astralis]"
After their semifinal match against Liquid, we spoke with FURIA coach Nicholas "guerri" Nogueira. He talked about their playoff matches in Dallas, and also about their MDL schedule and upcoming events.
We can start with this match here. What were your expectations versus Liquid?
Our expectation was pretty good because we watch a lot of demos from them. The difference now is we watch demos to see what they are doing, what we can do to win against them. We knew Nuke would be a pretty tough map because we were starting on the T side, but we know our potential on T sides. I think we could do much better with like three situations in our advantage so the half would be like 8-5 easy. On the CT side we took too long to start playing more like us. We lost some situations where we had the advantage again. Tier one teams don't make a lot of mistakes when they are in this type of situation, so we are learning from our mistakes right now. That's fine, that's okay, that's the way.
Do you think you could have won the match on Nuke? It was pretty close there.
Yeah, for sure, for sure. For Nuke, if we maybe had a better half on T side we could win.
Going back to yesterday against Vitality, was there something particular to help you guys win? You beat them pretty hard.
When we start good in the game, with good communication and feeling with the situation, it's difficult to stop us. We get more hype and more aggressive and it's difficult to deal with. Now I think teams really study us because we could beat anyone right now. I'm really happy about that. We could show our level in this tournament, and we want to play more tournaments because we will gain a lot of experience.
We can touch on DreamHack Rio, where you guys were in the final with a crazy match against AVANGAR. Was it disappointing to lose to them?
It is always disappointing to lose, even right now against Liquid. We know they are top two in the world, but no-one likes to lose. We knew the playstyle of AVANGAR is a slow-based style. The matchup was okay for us. We had a good half, I think 10-5 on the CT side of Train. I think we won the pistol on T side, and I think it's 13-6, 13-7, and we lost that force-buy. We are trying each game, each map, to do better force-buys. It was disappointing but we made a good run there too. There was a lot of pressure on my guys because we are playing in our country with a lot of crowd for us. It's difficult because we are new and we are getting a lot of experience from these type of events.
Notably you guys decided to schedule out all your MDL games early and you had a lot of games on one day. How has the schedule for this season felt so far, as it's a compressed season already?
We need to take good care with that so as to not burn out my players. We are in the beginning of our careers, so we need to play a lot to gain experience. MDL is important for us because we want to play Pro League. I think we have the level to play in Pro League, we are beating a lot of Pro League teams, so the main goal is to go to Pro League. So we need to play a lot of matches. I told the guys, we need to do more than is normal to do, but it's fine. We lost three games, but it's okay we are in the playoffs.
A comparable situation is ENCE in Europe, who ended up dropping out of MDL. Do you think it was a good decision on their part to do that?
I think they are in the tier one level, moreso than us. I think it could be a good decision because they need to take care of the players and their mental health. Because they have a lot of invites and they are top three in the world, they could give up. For us it's different, we are not like them right now.
Up next you have ECS, what are your expectations for that? You're in a group with Astralis, NiP, and NRG.
We already played against NiP at the Main Qualifier for the Major. We know they are a pretty tough opponent. We have played a lot against NRG; we practice against them. Astralis we already played in practice I think twice. The first game will be Astralis, the best team in the world. Our goal is to beat them. To make history we need to play against a lot of good teams to gain more experience. That's our focus.
Finally, you have the Minor Qualifier after that. Do you think you are going to be able to make the Minor pretty easily?
I don't know about easily, because I think NA CS is pretty stacked. We have a lot of good teams in NA that could beat us. We had a lot of tough games in the qualifiers so we need to pay attention and play 100%. Its the dream of anyone to play the Major and we have played one and we want to play as many as we can.
