Olga: "It's really hard to have teams the same level as Europe"

Having been ranked as the second best female player of the year in 2022 as part of FURIA, Olga "Olga" Rodrigues made the surprise decision to join Asian outfit HSG fe after ESL Impact Katowice. ESL Impact Season 3 Finals in Dallas is the first chance for HSG fe to show off what the team has been working on but it got off to a disappointing start after a 16-6 loss to NAVI Javelins. Dust2.us' Jeff "Mnmzzz" Moore talked to Olga about the switch of regions, adapting to speaking English for the first time and what the team needs to work on before their second group game against Brazilian side Black Dragons fe.

Please note that the full interview can be found below on YouTube, while the transcript has some key snippets from their conversation.

When you look at that match, we saw a lack on the second half on Vertigo. Can you walk us through what went wrong against Javelins?

I guess to talk about the second half we have to talk about the first, because we were doing great in the beginning of the first half. After we lost some after-plants we should have never lost, we kind of lost our game, the right way to play, and they just could make round after round. We just had a half with five rounds as a CT and we go to the second half with a big difference in the score. We didn't win the pistol so everything becomes really tough to come back into the match.

How does it feel to be one of the first players to be headhunted to be a top player and pulled out to join a different team?

It feels great. Moving to a different region, when I compare their region with mine there is not so much difference because we have difficulties against other regions like Europe. The practice time, the way we play, the teams we play... it's really hard to have teams the same level as Europe, even tier two tier or tier three teams. I could see the difference when we went to Sweden boot camp before the Sweden impact I could see a huge difference. I was not expecting there to be so much difference between the regions.

It's your first time communicating in English, as are a lot of players on HSG FE because a lot of them speak Malay or Chinese. How are the comms in the team is it going well in the lineup?

The first week was a bit hard for me. I could understand but to speak in tough moments was a bit hard. After the first two weeks, I could fit in well because our language and comms are basically in English. We just have some keywords in Chinese. For example, when the Malaysian players are playing together they speak Malay, when the Chinese players are playing together we speak Chinese, but when the whole team is speaking it is in English.

You were the second-best player in the HLTV Rankings for the Impact scene, now you have joined the new team do you think you can defeat ANa and be the number one?

Sure, it's never going to change I will always want to be the best player.