coldzera: "We thought Gambit would pick Cache against us"

SK became the fourth team to advance to the playoffs at the ELEAGUE Major following a 3-1 record, with their latest win coming from an Overpass encounter with Gambit earlier today.

coldzera & co. locked a playoffs spot with a 3-1 record in the Swiss group stage

We then talked to Marcelo "⁠coldzera⁠" David about the match as well as their previous one with FaZe, which SK lost despite leading 9-1 in the first half, and he also explained how the team is meshing with João "⁠felps⁠" Vasconcellos again now that they have played four matches together.

Let's start with your Gambit match first, the first half was very comfortable but the second side got pretty close, how did that go from your point of view, why couldn't you close it out earlier?

In the second half we got the pistol, but we lost the antieco, so it was pretty hard because of this. We knew they would play with a lot of guys on B and we tried to improve as best we could, but we didn't prepare for Overpass today, we prepared for Cache, we thought they would pick Cache against us. We didn't have anything special for today, we just tried to play our best and we won.

Going back, could you touch on the FaZe match on Cache as well, where you started 9-1 but then dropped off towards the end of the half and particulary on the CT side?

FaZe stepped up on the CT side when we lost the eco on B, we used our nades really badly to create space on the B bombsite and they started doing the comeback after this. On the second half, we had a lot of bad decisions on the CT side. We chose the wrong setups and they did good strats against our setups, every time we changed it they did a good strat and broke our setup. I think the game was not hard for us, but we made the wrong decisions every time, we need to be better for the next one.

Now that you've been able to play four matches and a few different maps with felps, have you been able to adjust to him again, are you feeling confident that you'll be able to show up in the series?

Of course playing with felps is hard, because we didn't have time to practice with him. We decided to practice with boltz, because we have a longer road this year, but it's okay, felps is a great player, he improved really well. And now we have three days to prepare new things for the playoffs. I think we have a chance to win this tournament.

Considering what you said about practice and the whole situation with felps, how much of a chance do you think you have to win it all? What is it going to take?

In the last interview, I said "of course, our goal is to be Legends", but of course the goal is to win the tournament. I think we have great potential, we just need to try to fix our strats and our gamestyle for the next games and just play our gamestyle, everone would like to face us in the playoffs, so I think everyone is scared. Every game will be a good game.

I noticed that fer had a little bit of a rough patch throughout the group stage, compared to what we expect from him on a daily basis - I remember you or FalleN talking about this when you joined up with boltz that fer and felps don't go together that well considering how aggressive they both are. Does that play a part in fer's performance?

fer was performing really well in praccs, I don't know what's happened with him, but from my perspective he didn't play bad, he played well, in his position. But I think in the group stage he was playing more passive than normally, but he will change, he will talk to us and he will play his gamestyle. Today he played much better, on the CT sides he always tried to punish them, and he did but he died. He always creates space for us, so I think once fer has more time to relax he will be on his game.

Does playing with felps also put more of a strain on FalleN, who now has to adjust on-the-fly and figure out where to fit felps?

Yeah, for us right now, it's hard when we play with felps, because we pracced with TACO in felps's role and felps in boltz's function, so right now FalleN is focusing more on felps in the rounds. At the same time it's hard to in-game lead, because we didn't prepare anything, but it's improving.