fer: "We are still confident in our Dust2"

We caught up with Fernando "⁠fer⁠" Alvarenga in a packed press area following MIBR's 2-0 win over Complexity to hear about the game and the upcoming semi-final.

Complexity has been one of the surprises of the tournament, but similarly to BIG, they weren't able to survive the first round of the playoffs in the Wembley SSE Arena. MIBR blitzed the North American side on Train before closing it out on Inferno in a tightly contested game.

In our chat with fer, we touched on taking down Complexity, their issues on Inferno on the series and his individual form since arriving in London.

Going into this match, you are one of the players that is confident in the way you approach the game, especially when you play against underdogs. So what was the thinking for you personally, going up against compLexity, a team you faced online in NA and obviously a big underdog?

I mean, compLexity are a good team, for sure, but we have played against them a lot of times online. But they had gone 3-0 in the group stage, so they were of course a scary team. And when you play against underdogs and if you lose the pistol and the first gun round, they have the economy and they have the confidence, it can be really dangerous for us. We managed to beat them easily on the first map, we had a pretty strong T-side on Train, we had the confidence to start on the T-side. The second map was a little bit hard because they broke our economy one time and they almost broke it two other times, but FalleN and I won a 2v5 that allowed us to come back into the game. But they are a really good team and it is always hard to play against them.

Their Inferno has been good throughout the tournament and you probably knew that you were going to play Inferno against them. But what is so good about their T side on the map? They got seven rounds and that is with losing the pistol, so it was a lot of gun rounds on that half.

As I said, they are a really good team and I think that the North American teams have more strats nowadays, they have more strictness, like European teams. There isn't a difference between NA teams and European teams, when these guys come to play their T-side it is going to be with strats, they have good team play. As CT I missed some shots that could have won some rounds for us, tarik as well, we f*cked up one or two rounds. So that was good for them. But at the end of the day, they are a good team and you can expect good strats, and when a player is confident and has his aim on point, he can win battles and rounds.

You touched on missing shots, there were some weird rounds, even towards the end of Inferno when you were against ecos you missed almost a full clip in Library. You still got two kills still and won the round, but it was uncharacteristic of you. How do you feel your form at this tournament?

Talking about individual form, I think that at the beginning of the tournament I wasn't playing that well. We aren't really trying to get a new style, but we are approaching it with some new strats, sometimes I'm doing new roles, but missing shots is always my fault. But the round you mentioned was a mess, he spotted me, he was peeking me and I kept walking, chasing him. It was really weird. But now I'm happy, I played really well today, and I'm even happier because our team is playing well. When we play our game it is easy to play. Even if we lose, playing our game is easy.

Na`Vi beat BIG so you are meeting them in the semi-final. Can you give me your thoughts on that game, especially seeing how dominant they were in that game and they looked pretty good in the group stage as well?

Against Na`Vi there is always a big fight, it is always hard to play against them. They are playing really well, they are coming here with a lot of good results, so they are confident, really confident. But we are MIBR and you can expect anything from us. We are going to put up a lot of fight against them and I hope we beat them. I think that last time around they beat us, and now it is going to be our revenge. And getting revenge at a Major would be really sweet.

From what we felt you are really confident in your Dust2, even though you lost 16-0 to Astralis, and Natus Vincere's Dust2 has been pretty poor but now they have got a win over BIG. So what do you think, is that map going to be played in the series against Na`Vi?

Yeah, it is funny because even against NiP and now against compLexity, we were talking about it, almost picking Dust2. We got 16-0'd by Astralis, but the game wasn't that hard to play. I mean, device on ramp wasn't missing a shot so it was hard to play against that, but Astralis didn't do anything really out of the norm, anything really different. They are playing the basics but they were wrecking us in terms of aim and all. The game was pretty normal to play, everything, basic setups, nothing really different. We are still confident in our Dust2, we almost picked it against NiP and now, but YNk and FalleN do the vetos and they study the opponents so they know what is better for us. If Na`Vi pick Dust2 or if it is our pick, I'm ready to play.