RUBINO: "The only thing I want is to come back to the top"

Ruben "⁠RUBINO⁠" Villarroel's first stint with Astralis went awry, with the Danes eliminated in the group stage following just one win in the group stage, against Luminosity.

RUBINO isn't certain about his future in dignitas

We caught up with the stand-in during the quarter-finals day to get his point of view of the event, Astralis' expectations going into ECS Season 4 Finals, and his plans for next year:

Tell me about what the first days with Astralis were like from your point of view, coming into the team and getting used to how they play.

I think it was nice in a way that I've been playing in a lower team now, the communication was so good and the spirit was all good, everyone is trying to cheer you up and everything. We practiced for some days and it went really well, to be honest, so the guys had expectations since they were at BLAST and they did well there.

Obviously the results weren't up to par, what do you think didn't work out, why were you only able to win just one out of five matches, losing to teams that weren't expected to go far?

I think it's a combination of people having an off-day, the first day went okay, I guess, we lost versus Liquid but we got the overtime. We should have closed that match, there were some unfortunate rounds that they won with 5 HP and such, but we were satisfied with the first day.

The second day we felt pretty confident, and we thought that we would go through, but something felt off for everyone, we lost every clutch situation, we lost every 2v2, everything, so it was hard and people didn't feel well, no one.

What was the team's morale like after the team went out?

People were still positive and no one is blaming each other, I think that's something they need credit for, they are really nice guys.

You have one more event to play with Astralis, what are the next few days leading up to Cancun going to look like?

I think we will practice for some days and then we'll go to Mexico, but I think the difference between Mexico and here is that people will not have the same expectations as they had before. I also think that we just have to give it everything, it can't go worse than this time. We have a really hard group, so we'll see what happens, but hopefully we'll get out of groups.

There has been some news regarding dignitas but nothing definitive regarding your future, can you share what the plan is for next year?

I don't know what's happening now. I'm still under contract and I don't know what's happening, hopefully we'll get a new team for dignitas, or else maybe I will get bought out, I'm not sure yet, but the only thing I want is to come back to the top. This year has been really hard for me individually and team-wise, I've always been like a support guy and it has been really hard in these lower teams.

Of course we had good players in dignitas, we had a lot of roster changes, we had good players, but it didn't work, I think we had a different mentality on how to play the game, how to practice, how to do stuff, and it didn't work out as we wanted it to. But we're still good friends outside of the game, so no one is hating each other.

Lastly, I wanted to get your thoughts on North, who have had a fairly underwhelming year, as someone who used to play with the team, what do you think is the problem?

It's hard to say. I still think they have a good team and good players, I think the firepower of this team is actually better than the last team we had. I don't know how it is inside, but how I see it from the outside is maybe that they don't have clear roles as we had in our team. When me and Magisk played, it was more like Magisk and k0nfig were set up to frag as much as they could, meanwhile now I feel like it seems like just k0nfig is doing that.

I think it's a combination of people not feeling comfortable in their roles and they don't work as a unit - it seems like it, but we'll see, they'll probably try to figure out what's happening and hopefully they will fix it. That's how I see it at least.