felps: "Brazilians don't give up"

Immortals became the DreamHack ZOWIE Open Summer champions following a two-map victory over Ninjas in Pyjamas, where the Brazilians gave the Swedes their first Cache loss on LAN in their full lineup.

After the squad lifted the trophy in Jönköping, we got a hold of João "⁠felps⁠" Vasconcellos and Rafael "⁠zakk⁠" Fernandes, who helped translate the winning interview:

Congratulations on winning DreamHack, now I know this is an awfully generic question, but how does it feel to win and especially, how does it feel after receiving so much criticism after the main qualifier?

João "⁠felps⁠" Vasconcellos: "It was a heavy weight off our shoulders, because we were not good at the major qualifier and we didn't start well here either, so the criticism was huge, but we proved everybody that we are Brazilians, and Brazilians don't give up."

Talking about the grand final itself, I was fairly surprised to see Overpass being vetoed by NiP, did you expect that and overall the whole veto?

 João "⁠felps⁠" Vasconcellos: "We didn't know what they'd ban, but we were sure what they would pick - Cache. And we were very confident on Cache, but Mirage, we don't play Mirage, so it was hard, we had a bit of confidence there, but we were confident we were going to win Cache. About Overpass, we don't play it either, so they banned maybe based on the game yesterday that we won against SK pretty easily."

Now onto giving NiP their first loss on Cache on LAN, did you have a specific game plan going into it?

 João "⁠felps⁠" Vasconcellos: "No, we didn't have any plan, we just trusted in our aim. When we play together as a team and hit the shots we hit today, no one can stop us."

Next up was Mirage and obviously you had this huge 12-3 lead and even won the other pistol, but then it started crumbling. First of all, where did your issues on the defence lie and secondly, did that affect your morale?

 Rafael "⁠zakk⁠" Fernandes: "Like we said, we don't practice Mirage, we don't play it, so when they started dominating the mid area, we didn't know how to combat that. They started doing splits on A and we saw that happening, so we had to wait until they were so confident that they were going to win with the same strat over and over, and then do our anti-strat."

You took a timeout at about the 13-9 mark, what did you talk about?

 Rafael "⁠zakk⁠" Fernandes: "We tried to break their momentum, you know, we just paused to chill, stay calm and talk to the guys "You know you guys have this game, don't choke now, they're doing the same things, let them build confidence and then we're gonna punch them in the face."

I want to talk about that eco that gave you map point and broke the game, was it just luck in being able to push out apps and get that one gun, and then stacking the B bombsite, or was that based on a read?

 Rafael "⁠zakk⁠" Fernandes: "Actually, I didn't do anything this game, I'll tell you the truth. This round was my doing, I told hen1 to go apps because f0rest was alone there, and after he picked the AK, SHOOWTiME said they were going B. I told them to go B fast and stack, that was all I did in this game. Just this."

Looking at the future, where do you see yourselves stand?

João "⁠felps⁠" Vasconcellos: "I think we're lacking a bit of experience, we need to play teams like Astralis, LG, Na`Vi, NiP. If we keep doing this and gain some experience, we're probably gonna be very good."

Our DreamHack ZOWIE Open Summer coverage has come to a close, before the Cologne major we will also put out full coverage of the ECS Season 1 Finals, taking place from June 24-26.