zakk: "Right now things are good since our confidence on LAN is really high"

HLTV.org was able to catch up with Luminosity's coach Rafael "⁠zakk⁠" Fernandes after his team eliminated Envy in Atlanta to talk about the team's progress, goals and vision.

After losing to eUnited in the opening match at DreamHack Atlanta, Luminosity bounced back by eliminating Envy from the tournament to keep themselves in contention for a playoff spot.

After their win, we sat down with Luminosity coach zakk to talk about the changes to get them back on track, the team's main goals in Atlanta, and preparations leading up to their next task, the Americas Minor closed qualifier.

We last spoke to the team at IEM Chicago, which is where things seemed to click going up against some notable teams there. What could you take away from the run in Chicago?

Well, we obviously realized that online CS compared to LAN is very different. We knew we could prove ourselves after beating AVANGAR, who had played really well at EPICENTER. Teams like eUnited are very strong online, especially against us... I don't think we have defeated them online yet. So, right now things are good since our confidence on LAN is really high because of IEM Chicago. Even though we lost yesterday, we felt really confident coming into this best-of-three today.

With that being said, what were the goals set for this tournament?

I'm not going to lie, our goal for this event is to win. In Chicago, we just wanted to go as far as we could because we knew that the level at that tournament was much higher compared to Atlanta, to be honest with you. If we reach the final, that's perfect for us.

There were some changes made that kind of made some more room for improvement with yeL leading. How are things now shaping up coming into this event?

Well, with the last online matches and playing in Chicago, we performed way better because I think everyone feared what steel would say if they did not do what he said. About yeL, he gives the team a lot of freedom to do whatever they want and work in the mid-round calls. So, we always start with a default and then yeL calls mid-round. steel always had a plan at the beginning of the round and that wasn't really working with our style. I love how things are going right now.

Let’s talk about the match against Envy. Walk me through playing against a new team who haven't really developed an identity quite yet.

We didn't really prepare too much for this match, to be honest. We thought that they would pick Mirage because that's their best map and they banned it, so we were really surprised they picked Dust2. I don't think that was a smart choice because we had played this map yesterday and we had made a lot of mistakes, losing to eUnited 16-13. We had a lot of time to review that demo and fix those mistakes, so we came out very strongly, closing the map 16-10, but I feel like it could have been 16-6. I thought we were getting over our heads, so we began to play slower and things got easier for us.

To wrap things up, what is the team's vision moving on from the online blunders and this event as you head into the Americas Minor closed qualifier?

We are worried because it will be online and right now everyone is playing amazing online, it's so hard for us to play online. We will do our best and prepare. It's going to be like a Major for us and not just a qualifier because we got relegated and we want to prove that we can reach the Major, that way people will start respecting us again. So we are going to work very hard for that.