fox: "Extremely hard group"

With only a few hours left before Mad Catz Birmingham starts, we interviewed k1ck ace Ricardo "fox" Pacheco to know how the Portuguese side have prepared for the tournament.

k1ck were last seen on LAN in December, when they finished 5th-8th at AMD Sapphire in Prague before winning XLParty over ASES. Since then, they have been performing well online, and even reached the group stage of RaidCall EMS One, in which they lost to ESC Gaming and ex-Absolute Legends.

In Birmingham, the Portuguese team will have to work hard to fend off the thread posed by Anexis and VeryGames in the group stage. Will they be able to reach the playoffs? Find out what Pacheco has to say about his side's chances.

How has your preparation for Copenhagen Games been? Have you bootcamped or simply practiced online?

We have been practicing on a daily basis from 16h to 20h for about a month. These last few days practice was not ideal because of Copenhagen Games. Unfortunately, we could not bootcamp.

In Prague, you were eliminated in the quarter-finals. Were you happy with this campaign, or were you hoping to do better?

I think things worked out well for us, but we left the tournament with the feeling that it could have been better.

After this tournament, Fyx left and was replaced by emotioN. Three months later, do you think the team have improved?

Fyx is a great player, but unfortunately he had to leave the team due to work commitments. The remaining players chatted and decided that emotioN would be the best choice. We had to change our playing style because these two players are different, but I personally think that this change has made us stronger.

This will be emotioN's first big tournament. Are you afraid he may crumble under pressure?

I am not worried about that because I know he has enough experience to play big games.

What is your opinion about the teams you will face in the group stage?

Our group is not easy. On the one hand, we have VG, who are one of the top teams in the world as everyone knows. On the other hand, we have Anexis, who recently won iSeries and who have great players. There is also CRG, who eliminated n!faulty at Mad Catz Vienna. I do not know Infused so well, but sometimes it is the least known teams who are toughest to beat. Bottom line, this will be an extremely hard group.

How far do you think your team can go in this tournament?

Our main goal is to pass the group stage. After that, we will play match by match and see where that takes us.

After a somewhat slow start in CS:GO, you seem to be finally on the same level as you were in 1.6. Do you feel more comfortable playing the game now? What took you so long?

CS:GO's release came at the right time because most of the players needed something new to have the same motivation that had made us play 1.6 all those years. At first, it took me some time to get used to the game, which is normal. I feel I am playing better, but I know I still have a lot to improve to reach my 1.6 level.

Many people expected you to go to Copenhagen Games. How come you didn't?

The fact that it took place in a Nordic country did not help because the flights are very expensive and we would still have to rent the computers. It was possible for us to go to Birmingham because it was half the price when compared to Cph Games. Unfortunately, our budget does not allow us to go to  every tournament we want.

You were recently eliminated from EMS One and you lost to ELTZ in the SLTV StarSeries qualifier. Why does your team struggle online?

Like everyone knows, Internet in Portugal is not very good, and ping really affects the game. In EMS One we had the toughest group, we beat LDLC.com and lost the match against ESC, a world-class team. Against Absolute Legends, things simply did not work out as we hoped. Our goal when he signed up for ProSeries was to qualify for StarSeries, and we have already assured ourselves of a relegation match against a team from StarSeries.

After Birmingham, do you have any other events in the pipeline?

We will attend XLParty on April 27th to 28th and DreamHack Valencia, in July. If more tournaments are announced, we will try to see if it is possible to attend them.

Thank you for this interview. Is there anything that you would like to add?

I would like to thank K1CK and our sponsors, ASUS, Ozone, Clickfiel and Kingston.