mezii: "If you've got nerves, that means you care"

Shortly after fnatic bested BIG 2-0 in the 2-1 pool of IEM Rio, Dust2.us' Ryan Friend snatched fnatic IGL William "mezii" Merriman for an interview. The two discussed the change in strategy following fnatic's loss to Heroic, mezii's transition to the IGL role, and the anticipation of playing in the Champions Stage, amongst a number of other topics.

Congrats on the 2-0 against BIG. Starting with Mirage, what was the change between your game against Heroic and now that allowed you to have such a dominant win on your opponent's pick?

Early on in the CT-side, our coach said they were the ones setting the pace, so we needed to reel it in and make sure we were the ones setting the pace. We did a good job coming back, I think they were 4-2 or 5-2 up and we brought it back to 10-5. With that, we brought the confidence back and coming into the T-side, we were pretty confident. Against Heroic, that was always going to be a tough game, but today we were really confident in our game plan, whereas in other games, we focused too much on other teams, today we focused on our own games. On T-side it helped us not get caught up in anti-strats and focus more so on ourselves.

You guys had a hard Challengers Stage but quickly rushed through the Legends Stage in a dominant fashion. Some are saying it's the seeding, others are saying "it is what it is". With that in mind, what do you think? Did you get a bit of luck from the seeding or do you just have to take every game as it is?

I think you've just got to take every game as it is. I think usually we'd have harder games. In this stage, a lot of the better teams, the top teams that everyone knows, also faltered and were brought down into the 1-2 or 0-2 bracket. We can't really moan or complain about it since you've just got to perform, and if the top teams can't perform then you're not gonna meet them in the 2-0 or the 2-1 matchups. I think for us we took each game as it comes and beat whoever was in front of us. We played NIP, who obviously went 0-3, but we were the first to beat them. We also beat ENCE who were looking good from the RMR to here. I think we've also had our fair share of harder games in the Challengers Stage as well. I think here you've just got to expect everyone to perform and if the better teams don't, then that's up to them.

Obviously as a UK CS player, what does it mean for you as one of the top British players? Heading into this New Legends stage, UK CS seems to have had somewhat of a revival, do you feel like you're spearheading that at all?

I hope so. I hope I can give that extra motivation for UK players to get to the tier 1 level. As it stands, it's hard to get a whole roster to stick to that level. At the moment, it hasn't really sunk in that we're doing this well and as a UK player, it isn't often seen. For me, it's just being happy for where we're at and hoping it gives that little push to show that with enough effort you can make it there.

You haven't had the easiest of career paths. Since leaving GamerLegion years ago, you went to Cloud9. Talk to me about the post-GamerLegion time and what it's been like since then.

It was definitely a rollercoaster. Going to Cloud9 had a lot of hype. We all thought it would be something really big and good, but when that went crashing down, something like that takes a big hit out of your motivation. For me, it was my first tier 1 team or tier 1 chance, so for me, I thought "okay, this is my time to push on, my time to really show that I can get back to that level." After that, getting back into competition with Endpoint and getting that confidence back within the tier 2-3 scene was really good for me. I proved that I can be back at this level and luckily fnatic was looking to rebuild. That was a really important time in my career because if I went directly from Cloud9 to fnatic, that would have been much tougher for me. I played a lot of different roles and it was a struggle for me. The Endpoint time gave me a lot of motivation and confidence to get back to that level so now I can feel like I can do most of the roles and whatever the team needs me to do.

Talking about roles, developing into this new IGL role, clearly it's working out going into this New Legends stage. How do you feel you've developed into this role?

It's always an ongoing process. It's never going to be perfect. Even if you look at the established IGLs, there are always mistakes. This tournament, there are a lot of top IGLs going out, which is tough for them. Especially when it's bad, you feel a lot of responsibility. For me, it's been an ongoing process. After each game or tournament, reviewing and making sure I get feedback from my team. That's what's really good about my team, we can be really open with one another. Everybody can talk after games saying this mid-round call was bad or we could've done this better. I think it's just making sure I can take it into the next game and really making sure we don't make the same mistakes. Something different is that I'm not on the backlines, everybody expects me to make the call.

Do you feel you've been forced into the role or is this something you've always been looking forward to taking on?

I was always looking to take it on. I think as a player, it's funny, you don't always want to be the IGL but you love the idea of being the IGL. I think when you get into it, I got that extra motivation because it's a new challenge. I've had a lot of different roles in my previous teams so now I think I definitely could do the job and perform well. For us, it's just about making sure we have the right players on the team, and if we have that, then I could do a good job as IGL. Samuelsson and also our coach keita were saying I have the qualities for it, it's just about developing it and after each tournament making sure we review and everybody has the right qualities in-game to take initiative and give ideas. It helps me when I don't have to micro-manage all the time.

For the playoffs, you're going to be going into a crowd of 15,000 to 20,000. We can hear a fraction of that now, how nervous or excited are you to be playing in front of the biggest crowd of your life?

I'm super excited. Every chance we had to play in front of the stage here was very exciting. There are always going to be nerves, because if you've got nerves that means you care. I'm always excited to play in these tournaments since it's my first time playing on a Major stage. In the arena, it's gonna be even bigger. It's only going to be a good thing for our team because we're still learning and we need that experience. For me especially, it's about getting experience. We want to be on stage and playing in front of the fans. I'm really excited for it.

About the team's formation, a new team but on the older side, does that play into your mentality?

I think it helped because out of game, everybody is always mature and can always have those conversations, like when we were down 16-2. We can always talk about it and nobody is ever too frustrated to give each other feedback. We've never been bothered about age. In terms of longevity, of course, it's better to have younger players, but in terms of motivation and putting time into the game, age doesn't matter. Looking at players like f0rest who even now could play on some good teams, as long as you have that motivation and put hours into the game, that's all that matters.

mezii and the rest of fnatic will now have a few days to rest and prepare for their quarterfinal matchup, with playoffs for IEM Rio set to begin on Thursday of this week.