FalleN: "We have eight tournaments and five trophies is the minimum we can get"

SK have advanced to the playoffs at ESG Tour Mykonos from first place in Group A, defeating MOUZ on Inferno after coming back from a 5-14 deficit on the Terrorist side, and besting Gambit 16-12 on Overpass.

FalleN pledges there will be no breaks until SK win five out of their next eight events

Shortly after making the semi-finals, Gabriel "⁠FalleN⁠" Toledo gave us an interview about Malmö, the aforementioned matches, and made a pledge concerning the remaining tournaments of 2017.

Let's reflect on Malmö, where you lost to G2, who have been called your kryptonite. What makes it so hard for you to play them?

I think G2's playstyle is a little bit more aggressive, they rotate way more than other teams on the CT side for example. But in the Malmö match-up, I think we had the game. We threw it, it was 15-10 for us and we made some mistakes. Of course it wasn't only the banana push that cost us the game, we made other mistakes after that.

And I think it was a good loss for us, the preparation we had for Malmö wasn't the best one. That loss was kind of a... prepare yourselves the way you like to prepare, do your best in preparation, because it matters. If we had won Malmö, maybe we'd be like 'Okay, we can keep doing whatever we were doing, it's working,' but as we lost it, we came back much stronger, and I think at this tournament we're showing a good level and we're excited for the future.

Talking about the mistakes, was there anything specific you talked about after Malmö?

There was a lot to learn from Malmö. It started from the game against North, we had to make some changes, we decided to change our game a little bit. Against G2, I think there were a couple of things that we already knew were a problem, but it really popped up in this game.

Here in Mykonos, you kicked it off by coming back from a 5-14 against mousesports, tell me about the comeback and the mentality you mentioned on Twitter after the game.

The game against mousesports was really hard, they won both pistols, we had some chances to win force rounds on T side and change that, but we weren't able to finish the rounds. We didn't give up at any point in this match, we knew we could make the comeback, we knew our T side on Inferno is pretty strong.

Things just started rolling, I think we had one or two moments that were kinda lucky for us, the moment when TACO planted the bomb on B with five or ten seconds in the smoke, that was really important. And there was one round when me and fer got oskar in the 15-13, oskar saw me and fer was able to kill him. Of course, Counter-Strike is like this, sometimes it goes your way, but you can't think it's just lucky. There's a lot of preparation and we did a very good job to beat them.

The situation you mentioned in the 13-15 round against oskar, was that something you were aware of, or did you just think fer had the angle covered?

I don't think anyone's gonna believe us, if I say it's lucky, they're gonna think it's planned, if I say it's planned, they're gonna say it's lucky. It's up to yourselves, you guys can think whatever you want, if it was planned or if it was lucky, it's up to you, we are SK, you know the level we play at.

The match-up against Gambit was also something you mentioned on Twitter, something you've been waiting for for a while. First of all, why were you excited to play them, and now that you have, what are your thoughts?

Gambit's a great team, it's amazing to see how far they have come so fast. As I said before on Twitter, it reminds me of our own team in 2015, the growth we had and things started going our way, we started learning and getting much better and won some tournaments. And then they got the Major, just like we did, and it's kind of funny, because they had some great results without facing us. And it's kind of the same that happened for us against fnatic in the past, fnatic didn't play us, we started getting good, we won a Major, we won some other tournaments and we didn't face fnatic.

This time, Gambit had to face the best team in the world and it's great to play them, they are good players, they have good synergy, and fitch is a good fit for them. I was just excited to play them, because every time we play them, I don't think we lost recently, it's always a great match. They play aggressive, they try to get duels, and we can overcome them.

Your summer run, when you won the five tournaments, was started by cs_summit, and it's hard not to see ESG Tour Mykonos as a similar opportunity for you. You're not in as much of a slump as you were after felps came in, but could this be another opportunity to get a confidence boost going into the remaining tournaments of the year?

Yes, we're using this tournament to gain our confidence back again. I don't want to look like I'm saying this is an easy tournament, it's not, just like summit wasn't. People say that summit was an easy tournament, but it wasn't, there were a lot of great teams.

We have great teams playing here, VP showed a good level in groups, we have Liquid, you have Gambit who won the Major and are doing pretty great, so the tournament is tough. Besides the fact that it is a very friendly and cool atmosphere to play here in Greece, we want to win. And we want to use this tournament to boost our confidence and fix our mistakes.

Lastly, you went on such a long run of tournaments throughout the summer, staying over in Europe for most of it. Is it going to be the same now, do you have a similar plan for the rest of 2017?

As we got back from vacation, we knew that we had nine tournaments to play. We played one already, we didn't win it, and the internal joke right now is if we don't take five trophies, there's no vacation until the end of the year. So yeah, we have eight tournaments and five trophies is the minimum we can get.