zakk: "We were lacking confidence"

Immortals have found their way into the DreamHack ZOWIE Open Summer semi-finals after all, as despite a loss to SK in the initial round, the Brazilians won the elimination match versus ENCE and the re-match with the Danes.

After their last series in the group stage the team's coach, Rafael "⁠zakk⁠" Fernandes, gave us an interview about Immortals' matches, how they adjusted to SK's Train and more:

Before we get to DreamHack itself I want to touch on the main qualifier, where you were considered one of the favourites but ended up getting eliminated in four maps. Do you agree that you were going through a slump or was it simply bad individual matches?

I think it was many things, we had a poor bootcamp, we didn't prepare very well. We needed to use our time wisely and we didn't use it smartly, so when we were there we choked in a lot of games. We should have won against TyLoo - they're a good team, don't get me wrong, but we should've won against them. And we picked the wrong maps, too, so it was a lot of mistakes, unfortunately.

What kind of confidence did you have going into DreamHack then?

Not very big. We lost the first game against SK because I think you made the right question, we were lacking confidence. But now we have won against two teams and the guys are playing way better, so they needed those two wins.

Against ENCE, the first map, Mirage, was very close purely because they almost came back at the end, did you get complacent or why were they allowed to do that?

I don't know, we couldn't read what they were doing. Actually, we know they were getting mid control every round, but the rounds we tried to break them, we were just confused and made a lot of mistakes trying to break mid. They just took the opportunity and we lost many rounds in a sequence and started getting nervous, the emotions got to them. 

Is it because the team is so young, all of them being 19-20 years old? Does that factor into dealing with the stressful situations in this kind of matches?

Yeah, of course it does, we need more time, more experience, more events like that, big events. They will now what to do in certain situations, right now they're not fully prepared, they didn't even reach 80% of their potential.

You met SK for the second time after losing to them on Train, which is the map I want to touch on. The second time you looked like you had a clear idea on how to handle their T side, what did you learn from the first one?

In the first game they were going a lot from alley with like three players and killing felps many times. So we studied them, started to get two or three guys to alley and waited for them to come, not comitting to a kill. We just waited, sat on our asses and killed them when they came in, that was our plan.

SK obviously came in with the two stand-ins pretty much as a mix-team, did that throw you off? Was it hard to predict them?

Yes it was. Sometimes it's bad to play with a mix, but sometimes you have an advantage, because you can't study them, you don't know what they're going to do. So the only way we had to study them was from the demo yesterday and they did the same things, that was lucky for us. If it was another map, maybe we would've lost.

In the semi-finals you will be facing GODSENT, what do you think about the team and how do you see yourselves fare against them?

I think they're very good to tell the truth, I'm not gonna lie. I really like those guys, they have tons of skill. They could be one of the top three teams in the world in some time, because they have pronax, znajder, twist, every player has a star quality, you know? But I think we can beat them, if we played like we did today, with our hearts, shouting every round and stuff like that, we can beat them.

Make sure to check out our interviews taken during day one in case you missed any:

Markus "⁠pronax⁠" Wallsten: "We've been playing so much lately"

Andreas "⁠MODDII⁠" Fridh: "valde is a complete player"

William "⁠draken⁠" Sundin: "I'd prefer playing GODSENT"

Aleksi "⁠allu⁠" Jalli: "naSu brought more stability"