arT: "We had a lot of trouble because we're trying to change a lot of things"

FURIA came into the Americas RMR rearing and ready to go. They first demolished 00 Nation 16-4, then scraped through against EG 16-13 to go 2-0 early on. A close 2-1 over Liquid guaranteed them a Major appearance, after which Ryan Friend interviewed the in-game leader, Andrei "arT" Piovezan, for a look at FURIA's run.

Before the Americas RMR run, some doubt had been cast upon FURIA due to their poor performance at recent events, including a failure to escape the IEM Katowice Play-ins. But this has turned around recently.

Yeah definitely we needed some confidence. The last tournaments we played were very lackluster. Our firepower was not on point, we had a lot of miscommunications in the team and the team was not confident enough. The pressure that every tournament that we don't play like we are supposed to, then the pressure just keeps stacking and it gets to the point where we have problems playing so it is very important to us.

One of the highlights in FURIA's self-admitted lackluster placements has been Kaike "KSCERATO" Cerato. The Brazilian rifler is playing lights-out, making an argument for being in the top three pure riflers in the world. In a time where FURIA seems fragmented, KSCERATO has been impactful in every single game,

KSCERATO has definitely been the superstar in the team for a long time now and him being solid makes a lot of space for us to be able to play rounds better and that's something we need to do everytime that we play in tier one. We are supposed to step up like him so hopefully we can manage to get our confidence up and have more KSCERATOs running around the maps! That would be awesome.

Major news for FURIA broke recently with Nicholas "guerri" Nogueira's coaching ban elapsing. With that ending, the coach can now sit behind his players at the RMR, a pleasure he has missed for over a year.

Yeah it's definitely very nice to have the squad complete again when playing tournaments. I think that was the thing we missed at the last Major, or the last two Majors I don't remember how many it was, but it's definitely helpful and it's an important time for us since there is so much pressure on the squad, so every little thing we can do to relieve that pressure is very helpful. Having guerri helps with that too.

Along with FURIA, paiN also went 3-0 in the Americas RMR, with paiN not even dropping a map along the way, an achievement that FURIA cannot boast. The upstart Brazilians are making a name for themselves with extremely positive results in the last few months, and FURIA will have to defeat them for a Legends spot at the Paris Major.

We know that paiN are a solid team from way back from last year. It's just that this year, they have results and shown some good improvement. It's definitely going to be a tough matchup. I don't think it's going to be easy or anything like that, it's going to be a very good game. Hopefully we can close it out for the perfect score.

Although FURIA have had issues recently, it's disingenuous to only talk about those as FURIA just secured a Major slot undefeated. This run was a positive for the squad as they look to improve for Paris.

In that matchup against Liquid, we had a lot of trouble in the maps just because we're trying to change a lot of things. It's just impacting us negatively. It's just a balance, and we hope we can manage this balance so that we can perform better, because today was, excluding Mirage, a struggle for us. We played some situations poorly, and we can't do that if we want to be a tier one team. We need to step up a lot.

Some of FURIA's Brazilian brothers, such as 00 Nation, Imperial, and LOS + oNe have been eliminated from Major contention. With only five slots available, it was always going to be a brutal format for American teams, but now with that hope extinguishing from their eyes, the reality starts to set in.

00 Nation was a surprise for me. Imperial had some tough matchups as well. If they lose two matches they're out so it's very tough for everybody. If they lose in the first or the second match it's very hard to come back since they're on the ropes all the time. It's a lot of pressure to be in that situation, and you can expect some teams to underperform when they're put on the line like that.

FURIA's run at the Americas RMR is not yet complete, as they still have to face a furious paiN for the only Legends place allotted to the Americas region. This top tier matchup will play out at 07:30PM tonight.