arT: "When drop's showing off like this, that's what we need to win the Major"

Following FURIA's incredible win over NAVI to continue their run in the IEM Rio Major, Ryan Friend spoke to Andrei "art" Piovezan in a post-match interview to break down the nail-biting series, some of arT's calls during the match, and André "drop" Abreu's massive performance on Mirage, among other topics.

Let's start with Nuke where at was 14-13 and you guys did not have that eco round against NAVI. What was going on there?

Yeah, that was my bad, I did a fast call towards B and they shut us down and after that it was a little messy. The team got scrambled and I could not make it in time to put the pieces in the right places and they got flanked, and we tried to rush towards A after getting some entries. It was too fast paced towards A when they have pistols. It should have went a lot slower after we got the entries. It was totally my bad and we knew that the map would be hard after that.

After the upsetting loss on Nuke, what was the team's mentality like heading into Ancient?

To be honest, I got a little upset at my myself. I had the feeling that I let my teammates down because I had control of the round and I could not do it and close it. But, at the same time I felt very confident going forward because I knew we were playing better than NAVI were and we won all the gun rounds except for three close ones. That was bad plays but we were playing well, we had good aim, and we were confident. Everybody had a chill head and I was telling them we were ahead and we just had to keep that mentality.

After a strong T-side on Ancient, you lost the CT-side pistol and chose to force multiple times. What was the plan there with continuing to play force rounds?

It was actually an on the fly call for the second round because we knew we could lure them towards A and try to make a trap there. We kind of did it, we could've won the round but we threw with the pistols long-range. It was an advantage for us. The next round, they had just one alive and we could've done the same thing but it was very close as well. It was 5v4 and we had M4 and was very close both times. It is hard to say if it was bad or good but we knew we had a very elastic score so we knew that we had gun rounds to come back later.

In hindsight, do you think that was the right gamble to make on the first buy rounds?

Thinking clearly now, maybe it wasn't but at the same time when you are calling on the fly it is hard to say what's good or bad. It's afterwards where that you see it. I think on the bright side, keeping the pressure up every round was nice for us. They are getting on the spot and we are pressuring them a lot. The plan had good things and bad things. Overall it was bad but it's hard to say.

Heading into Mirage, FURIA had to win that pistol heading into the second half. What was your plan to force that outcome?

It was a crazy round, we had a lurker and we kind of did the pistol round on the fly. We adapted and we had a plan, but when I saw the guy crossing Bench, I knew something was weird and I started to slow down and get picks off with Glocks. It just worked out, I think KSCERATO did a 3k or something, he was nuts on this round. We played calmly and we managed to win that one, and we need it really badly.

On the T-side it was still very difficult to string rounds together. You had the miracle round where NAVI forgot to buy a defuse kit and the bomb went off. Tell me about that moment.

It was crazy, every gun round after the score was even was crazy. It was good to us and then bad, we were losing and then winning again. It was over and over. But for this round, we kinda knew they didn't have a kit and he was trying to save time because that was the best gamble we could make. As soon as he cleared the bomb and we saw there was no kit, we just started screaming because we knew that was our round.

Did you just did ride that confidence high after that to propel FURIA to victory?

Yeah when I looked to both my sides, drop's face was full like he knew we were going to win. I told the guys to relax because I knew we going to win this, we're going to play and win, don't worry about that. We threw a slow round to finish off and it kind of went sideways but we managed to close it.

How proud are you of drop's monster performance on Mirage?

I'm so fucking proud of drop. He also helps me a lot in the comms, he's a very active guy. When he's active and showing off like this, that's what we need to win the Major. I was not playing my best game, I was making some bad plays but when you have teammates like that to step off and take the pressure, that's what is important in CS. That is why it's a team-based game.

To wrap up, what are your thoughts about the match against Heroic tomorrow?

I would say same thing as NAVI, we know it's going to be a tough game and we're going to prepare a lot and just enter the server ready and just play round by round. Think about first gun round, first pistol, and try to win every single round, and don't think any further than that.

FURIA will be taking on Heroic tomorrow at 03:30PM as they look to go all the way in front of their home crowd.