zakk: "VINI's leadership has nothing to do with FalleN's"

After Imperial's scrappy win over Grayhound to keep their hopes alive of reaching the group stage of IEM Cologne, dust2.us' Gonçalo "GoncOak" Carvalho sat down with Rafael "zakk" Fernandes to talk about the roster changes, Vinicius "VINI" Figueiredo's leadership, and the arrival of Henrique "HEN1" Teles and João "felps" Vasconcellos.

Tough game against Grayhound. Mirage could have gone your way but ultimately didn't. What are your thoughts on this series?

I think we had a great CT-side showing today. I believe we were able to tie up some loose ends from yesterday. Our anti-ecos still suck, we have been losing many of those, pistols as well. We are still in the process of finding our identity, who we are. Before we had a face, a leader, FalleN, and it was very clear to everyone how he wanted to play. Now we are finding a new style, more aggressive. We just need to adapt a bit.

Talking about your style, FalleN left and now VINI is the one leading the team on the server. How is adapting? Are there a lot of similarities between him and FalleN?

VINI's leadership has nothing to do with FalleN's. Despite him learning a lot with FalleN, VINI likes to play faster, and more aggressively and FalleN prefers to have map control, wait for reactions, play slower, and enter the site with 15 seconds remaining. The T-side style from one has nothing to do with the other, regarding the leadership style, I'm liking it a lot. He is still learning how to impose himself, and how to tell his teammates how to fix their mistakes. For VINI is not easy to tell his teammates they are doing something wrong, he is still learning how to be stern. As a leader you need that and he is still learning that, but he is been doing great, he has a lot of dedication, he has been putting in a lot of work, so everything will be great.

VINI started off quietly on Inferno but then he took off, and the team turned the game around completely. VINInferno is real? Is he THAT comfortable on the map?

Yeah, he is. He is the most comfortable out of everyone.

Does the team feel that and just goes with the flow or is it more of an individual thing?

I think it's an individual thing. We know he has a lot of map knowledge, but we don't play around him. Everyone plays their game but he always ends up shining the most.

Does that influence how much you guys play the map?

It's a map that's been going great during practice. We knew they were going to pick the map so we studied very well how they played, and when you do that you end up being even more comfortable. He studied a lot and it paid off.

Talking about Mirage now. Stats-wise, it is your worst map, not bad at all, but the worst map nonetheless. What's there to improve on Mirage?

Actually, what has happened before with Imperial I have already deleted from my mind. That team doesn't exist anymore. That team with FalleN and chelo, okay, we still have some strats from that roster, but the team's identity is totally different, so the map pool is also totally different. Mirage needs work on the T-side, but that goes for all of our maps. We lost two anti-ecos we shouldn't have lost and we lost both pistols, and that makes things harder.

You said that the team changed a lot with the departure of FalleN and chelo. This actually started as The Last Dance before you even joined the team, but now it's VINI leading the team, and you have felps and HEN1 that joined recently. What are the short-term and long-term goals of this roster?

Short-time, which for me means six months, despite in esports six months being a lot of time, but we want to stay together for even more time because we have a really cool environment. During these next six months, we want to polish things and find VINI's identity as a leader, HEN1 needs to get into the AWP meta, he's a super aggressive AWPer when the meta-AWPer is more supportive, so we need to adapt in that case. When felps came from Fluxo, he came with no confidence, he was saying that his plays are not working out anymore, that his plays also don't work, so he needs to find himself more. I think that those are our short-term goals, find out who we are. Long-term-wise, we want to qualify for the CS2 Major.

You said HEN1 needs to adapt to the meta but he has been one of the best performers. He was very good with MIBR, he started off very well with Imperial. Won't changing his style screw that up a bit?

Maybe. If that happens you have to blame me (laughs).

Yesterday you faced Monte on Nuke. Your T-side was good, you won the half with eight rounds, but today the only three rounds you guys won on the T-side were rounds with not a lot of investment from your side. What changed from yesterday to today, was it an opponent thing or an Imperial thing?

It was the first our first official match, and this is a big one, Cologne only has top teams, and we were very nervous even with the first half going as well as it went. Our CT-side ended up having some mistakes inside the A site that we have already reviewed. But after the debut, everyone was feeling looser, and more comfortable. So I think it was a debut thing.

What about today's T-side? You only got three rounds.

Oh, yeah. We went to halftime 13-2 up, and as we were close to closing the game, the nerves and anxiety and communication started getting crazy. It seemed like the guys were getting shot in real life, such was the environment's tension. We ended up closing the map with our hearts, something that won't happen for sure against the better teams. We need to control that a bit better.

Talking about emotion, here in the pressroom we were able to hear you scream a lot. You screamed more than your players. Do you feel the need to scream more and motivate your players? Is that a way to try to intimidate your opponents?

My screams are more to motivate my players, to make them more aware and motivated, but it has nothing to do with the opponents. Sometimes I like to scream at our opponents but only when they understand Portuguese. For example, if we play FURIA, I will scream a lot at them. Against European and North American opposition I don't scream at them.

Tomorrow you will meet NIP. What are your expectations? HEN1 told us that you guys have been here in Europe for a week and a half, did you have the chance to play against them?

We practiced against them. NIP are looking good, they are playing well, and they did well at their last event. I believe that, objectively, it is a match that they should win, they are playing against a new team, but when we practiced against them we got very good results. I believe that if we play without getting too much into our heads, we have great chances of beating them.

Imperial are set to face NIP tomorrow at 01:30PM in a series where the winner goes through to the group stage and the loser goes home.