Lekr0: "Played only CS at our bootcamp, no other games"

As they lost the first match to FaZe 8-16 on Cache, fnatic are now 1-1 after defeating Virtus.pro with ease on Inferno, 16-6.

Lekr0 & co. are now 1-1 in the Swiss format

We caught up with Jonas "⁠Lekr0⁠" Olofsson to get his point of view on fnatic's matches so far, as well as their preparation and bootcamp ahead of the tournament, and their goals:

The first round against FaZe here didn't go very well for you on Cache, what went wrong there? Is it a bad matchup considering your history?

I don't really think the matchup was that bad, I know we had problems with FaZe before in EPL and ECS, but it's still just two games. I think they had a good read on our CT side, they had good timings with their A rushes and the A fakes as well. I think they outplayed us on the CT side and the T side was a bit... we lost some clutches, I think it went alright, it wasn't like team mistakes, they played well.

What about their middle control? It looked like you had a lot of problems with that and Cache is generally about mid, was that a key issue as well?

Yeah, I think we gave up mid a bit too easily and sometimes when we had our mid stack, that's when they did the A rush. Then we swapped it up and played two A, heavy there, and then they took mid just very slowly and they got it for free. JW had to hold it by himself, so it wasn't easy for him. They chose where to go pretty well.

Going into the match against VP, you must have seen what happened to them in the first round, were you feeling confident about it?

It's not that we underestimate VP, because we know what they can do when they play against good teams. I know they have a hard time playing against less known or less good teams, but we played against them with respect and that's what they deserve, I think.

Was the match as easy as it looked from the scoreline?

I think we had the game in our hands pretty much, we never lost our momentum, we never got shut down or stopped, thinking about the next move. We always had something planned for the next round or mid-round, we were really comfortable.

Can you go back a couple of weeks and tell me what your preparation looked like ahead of the Major? How much time did you put in and what was the focus?

We put in a lot of hours after the break, we decided to only play CS at our bootcamp, no other games, we were all supposed to reach 100 hours and we pretty much did it. With our focus towards the Major, playing as much as we can, and we did a bootcamp as well for like two weeks, so the focus has been really good at the Major.

The focus was the map pool for sure, we're comfortable playing all maps now. Before, in ECS and EPL, we had struggles against FaZe in the veto because we have some maps that we didn't play back then and now we're comfortable during the vetoes against teams.

fnatic and bootcamps don't really go together historically, has that been successful for you towards the end of 2017?

It's pretty much that they were so dominant before, they didn't have to do the bootcamps, because I don't think they really needed it, they didn't practice as much as I know. With the opponents being a lot better, every team is getting better, you have to put in everything you can or you're going to fall behind. We're putting in as much as we can.

Tell me about the team's goal for this, what would be a realistic expectation here and a goal, can you win here?

I think we can win it. We had Major champions before, they have this experience and I don't think aiming for something less would fit us. We're going to aim to win everything.

Do you see the Major champions in your team as perhaps extra motivation?

Not really as motivation, but you know you can always lean on them. Today they played really well, I didn't have the best of games, but you know you can just trust them to solve situations, they have a really good read on the game. You can always fall back on them.