Straka: "It's a great format for us"

The Argentinians had a slow start to the tournament, losing to Singapore 14-16 in the opener, but managed to bounce right back in the following match versus Tunisia, crushing them 16-2.

Nahuel "⁠Straka⁠" Vazquez talked to HLTV.org about the tournament, their team and what this chance means to them.

I wanna start by getting your thoughts on this tournament in general.  So, how do you feel about this type of a tournament and what does it mean for you to be here?

Well, it is by far the biggest tournament we've ever played, we're very happy that we could qualify for it and being here is amazing. We've had to travel a lot, but we've never been outside of South America to play Counter-Strike, so it's great.

Talking about your team, can you tell me what was the process, how did it come to these five players playing for Argentina?

Actually, Jony Boy was the one to pick the line-up. We four, except Jony, we played in a team a couple of years ago, so he thought that for a mixed team this was the best team that could happen because we already knew each other and we had some chemistry when playing. So yeah, that's how the team was picked.

Did you prepare for the qualification process or for the tournament now? What did you do and how did it go?

We didn't prepare for the qualification, we just got in the server and played. For the tournament we prepared for 3-4 weeks, we stopped playing with our teams in this period so we could fully prepare for this event.

Talking about today, you lost the first match versus Singapore, it was pretty close, and then you stomped Tunisia. Can you talk me through the first and the second match?

The first map we kinda started slow, or without a lot of confidence. We weren't in level, maybe we were nervous, we were kinda cold. When we warmed up it was the CT side, we kinda grinded back our way but we couldn't make it, we lost 14-16. Then in the second match, it was the same map, so we talked about our mistakes in the last map, we sorted things out and we won 15-0 first half, lost the pistol round and then finished it 16-2.

You only have one more match today, versus Canada - what do you expect from that match?

They are a great team, they have a few players from TSM that is a very big team in the US, we expect them to be a lot better than the two teams we just played so we need to step up our play against them.

So what do you think the key is if you want to beat them, is there a certain player that needs to step up?

We need to be all five together and get the best performance we can as a team. We have to remember we are five players, playing on the same computers and same setup and we have a chance to win.

The players from Argentina had a 3-4 week break from their teams to prepare for TWC

All the teams go through to the playoff that will take place on Saturday and Sunday - what do you think about this kind of a format, especially in a tournament like this?

For us, it's a great format for us as we can test every team and see how we stand again certain teams - since we never played against these players. And then we go to the playoffs. I think it's great.

What do you expect from the tournament yourself, where do you think you can place?

Our main goal is to attract sponsors and people to take a look at us and see that we could be good players if we just make the step of being professional. There are no professional teams or players in our country yet so this is a big step for our country - we hope we can "sell" ourselves to the sponsors and let people know us.

When we are talking about your country, we can talk about your local scene a bit. It's been all about Brazil for some time now, but what's going on in Argentina? I know there are some joint leagues, LAN's...?

Brazil made a huge step when the now SK guys started winning. That made like 10 professional teams in their country. Also if we want to compete against them we would have to fly to their country, but a lot of big tournaments they separate us, so it's kinda hard. So that's why Argentina is kinda on the side, we are a step below.

Going back to the tournament, who do you think is the favorite, the most dangerous team here?

Before the tournament started I would think it was Denmark, but they lost their first match against Sweden, which I think is weird. I still think Denmark and Turkey are the favorites, as they have a core of three players from the same team, and they are pretty good teams, especially Heroic. Sweden and France are also ok, but are pretty mixed so I think it's between Denmark and Turkey.