ANa: "Since my first Impact season, I receive messages from Brazilian fans"

The sun rises in the east, the sun sets in the west, and Imperial fe will win another Impact LAN trophy. In another fairly dominant affair, the European squad successfully attain their seventh LAN trophy, shutting out all competition yet again. After the final, Dust2.us' Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore spoke with Imperial fe's Ana "ANa" Dumbravă about the match, the team, and more.

Imperial fe have won their seventh Impact title in a row. How do you feel your team did in the finals?

I feel very happy. I'm very proud of my teammates, that we managed to win our seventh trophy. I have nothing bad to say, I'm just very happy.

Map one was nearly immaculate, but Dust2 came closer where they made a mistake. How do you feel Let Her Cook did playing against the goliaths of the women's scene?

I'm proud of them, especially meli. She's my teammate from the national team, so I'm very proud of her, that she achieved this with her teammates. Obviously we didn't let them off so easy in the finals. I think in the semifinal, we lost a bit of energy. I felt that semifinal against Fluxo was the final. Maybe we just lost some energy after those games. It was a tough game on Dust2 but we managed to close it out.

You mentioned that the win over Fluxo Demons took a lot of energy from the team. hyskee said on stage that was the match you guys were most focused on. In your opinion, was Fluxo Demons the second best team here?

I believe so. I believe they are very capable of winning the tournament. They showed great CS against us, so we just focused a lot on that match. Obviously we came into the final, we had a break, made some strats, some anti-strats after the semifinal. That's all.

Ever since your team was formed, they have never lost a LAN final. What does it require from your team to be so dominant year after year after year?

I'm just gonna talk subjectively about myself and my teammates. I believe that we have this champion mentality that that we should never give up. For example, Fluxo had a 7-0 advantage on Mirage. We almost lost that semifinal, but we didn't care about the score. We just believed in ourselves. We just said "Ok, we need to show our best. We worked so hard for this and we shouldn't let this go out on a bad note." So we just worked very hard before ESL Impact and we believed in ourselves. I guess that's the secret.

vilga left in the off-season and was replaced by zAAz. You never really see a winning team make a roster change. Astralis isn't getting rid of device to add jUGI, or G2 isn't cutting players after winning a trophy. A lot of people think that move is kind of weird. What happened?

I'm not gonna say a lot about the change. I think it's mostly personal and it was more internal. Obviously we won everything, and maybe from the outside perspective people were kind of shocked, but I believe in my teammates and we just went with the flow and we did this big change. We changed roles, we changed players, we changed the in-game leader. From vilga's part, I believe she made me a better player, I learned so much from her and I respect her a lot, so that's it.

You also changed organizations. What happened with Nigma Galaxy?

Everything was fine. In Saudi Arabia, Counter-Strike is not so popular, so it was kind of difficult to keep the CS team in their organization. There was no drama, just from the outside perspective from the Saudi League and so on. On our new family, Imperial, I'm very grateful. We waited so long, especially when you're the best team in the world, so they were like the lightning to the thunder for us. They gave us a shot, they gave us a chance, they believed in us and we showed it today that we can be the best again.

It's a Brazilian org that's only really had Brazilian players, signing a European Impact team. How did that signing come to be?

The short story is about a few months ago, we were at the HLTV awards and we met with yungher, and because of her we got the chance to get some contacts in the Brazilian community. Through her, we got the contact with Imperial, my coach was speaking with Imperial's CEO, and we just found a good spot for each one of us. They just believed in us, and that's why we're with them.

You mentioned them being the light at the end of the tunnel. Does it feel good to reward their faith in you by winning the first event with them?

I believe that they made a good decision in taking us and we showed them that we can bring trophies, even though we are not Brazilians. I believe the community is very happy with us being with a Brazilian organization and they are proud of us. I'm really grateful for them cheering for us. Since my first Impact season, I'm receiving messages from them all the time. I'm just grateful for them.

What comes next after this?

This is our job. It's our job to win trophies. We do our best to show up, play great CS, and hopefully in the future, not me, but in the future one female player can achieve the goal to participate in mixed teams. That's one of the goals. Obviously after this huge win everyone will enjoy a bit of vacation. I think everyone deserves a bit of time off and obviously nothing is gonna change. We're gonna keep training, we're gonna keep trying to win trophies, and so on.

Will it be a Brazilian vacation?

Yes. After this tournament in Dallas, we are planning to go to Brazil. The organization has prepared many stops for us to visit in Brazil to appreciate to community and do some stuff for them. I'm very excited