FalleN: "I feel that coldzera really wants to win [the MVP]"

SK became another name in the playoffs, as they secured their third win after the Brazilian derby on Overpass, which went the way of the tournament favorites with João "⁠felps⁠" Vasconcellos putting up 37 kills (2.40 rating 2.0).

We got a hold of Gabriel "⁠FalleN⁠" Toledo to talk about his squad's journey to playoffs, during which they conceded Inferno to BIG while defeating PENTA and Astralis, and Marcelo "⁠coldzera⁠" David's performance throughout the group stage.

A different tournament will start in playoffs, FalleN says

The in-game leader also shared his point of view of the crouch jump discussion that led to all teams agreeing not to use it throughout the remainder of the tournament:

Let's run through the group and how satisfied you were with your performance, given some of the matches in which you were heavily favored being close.

I think I'm satisfied. The match against BIG, I think we could have had a big chance to win, we screwed up some rounds that were very, very important. I'm personally not satisfied too much with my level in those games, but the team has been great, we had coldzera playing amazing games, we had felps outstanding now in the last one. The important thing was getting out of groups, it's a different tournament starting now in playoffs.

How fantastic was coldzera, 35 kills in the first two matches, does he just get extremely determined at the Majors?

Yeah, coldzera loves playing Majors, right, he was MVP at the last two and I personally feel that he really wants to win this one as well. Not only because it's a Major, but because the last tournaments we saw fer being the MVP, we saw me, and I think he feels like he needs to be the one at this tournament. I hope that's a good thing, it could hurt him because sometimes you're expecting too much from yourself, or going too hard on the things you're doing.

But I think he's had a great tournament and he has the right mindset for it, he's not thinking too much about it. He's an excellent player, he can do everything. Sometimes, he overthinks too much, as every single player does, and it can hurt us, but it's very difficult to catch coldzera off-guard. For example, in the match today, we were going to do a B execute and someone from Immortals broke the door with a nade, and he adjusted in miliseconds and we had the right answer for what was happening.

In the first three matches in the group, you played Inferno, do you now see that as one of your best maps?

Yeah, Inferno is definitely one of our best maps. We can play six maps but Nuke and it's hard to say which map is our best right now, because we have been playing a lot, and sometimes our Train is good, sometimes it's Overpass, there are tournaments where Cache is good but on the other hand, it goes south sometimes. It really depends, it depends on the tournament, it depends on how much focus we put in practice before as well, and it depends on which team you're playing against.

FalleN isn't sure what SK's best map is

You must have expected Immortals to pick Overpass, why did you feel comfortable facing them on it, given their results on it here, overtime against Astralis and a win over Na`Vi, two of the best teams in the world on that map?

To be honest, I don't think too much about who teams beat on it when I'm choosing a map. If you think that way, it can go very wrong, our team plays very differently from the other one.

You have to watch the match and understand why they won. If you consider the match Immortals won against Na`Vi for example, I felt that Na`Vi definitely had a chance of winning that map, but Immortals took it from them. If you look at the game, we knew the way they like to play, we are comfortable starting on CT, and Overpass CT side is a hell of a side for us.

One last question about the discussion that we had a couple of days ago about the crouch jump bug, what are your thoughts on how the players approached that situation and how it got resolved in the end?

The thing is, we don't have an association that is really well executed, which means those kinds of concerns right now are more about you going and trying to solve it with other players. It doesn't make a perfect path, the information doesn't flow from where it should to someone who can take care of it or can do decisions.

When they started doing it against Immortals at the qualifier, Immortals complained and people were like 'well, you should have studied them'. And then nobody cared about that and then they go and beat FaZe, and people go 'oh, now they beat FaZe, now this is a little bit too much.' BIG made this a part of their game, because every single setup as CT, in afterplants, it's like they're abusing it to a next level.

If you start to think about this crouch bug, it's basically a wallhack. A wallhack makes you see other people without them seeing you, the jump makes you see other people without them seeing you. So it's basically the same thing, and of course it shouldn't be in the game.

What happened is: I was one of the guys who started the conversation, we needed to do something, for me this bug was ruining the tournament. It wasn't real Counter-Strike, so we needed to do something about it. I went to karrigan and said 'let's group up with the other teams and try to discuss it'. Unfortunately, BIG wasn't here at the beginning, and I wasn't able to finish the entire conversation with the Valve guys and everyone from the tournament, because we had a match.

But they were able to reach a satisfying resolution, because Valve can't enforce it right now, they can't change the game, they can't fix it on a moment's notice. So the only way was for the teams to understand that this is too much and it shouldn't be done. In our match, I think they used it sometimes, but using it once or twice is not too much, and people have been doing that for the past month. I personally don't think we lost because of it, even if they got some kills with it, we were perfectly capable of winning that match and we lost it in other moments.

What I think is a shame is that BIG is a really good team. This somehow damages their reputation in the community and the players, but I hope they can still do great in the playoffs and even more without using it, because they have a very good team right now. They're well prepared, they have good strategies, a good leader, everything is going well for them. I'm cheering for them.