fer: "We are trying to change our style a little bit; add this new fast stuff"

In our interview with Fernando "⁠fer⁠" Alvarenga, conducted after MIBR finished their IEM Sydney run in 3rd-4th place, we heard the rifler's thoughts on the new-old lineup and their results so far.

The Brazilian squad grabbed a playoff berth and lost to the eventual champions, Liquid, in the semi-final of IEM Sydney last weekend. The roster which dominated back in 2017 is now placed seventh in the world, and are aware that they have a lot to work on to go back to their world-beating level.

While the grand final between Liquid and fnatic was going on, and the crowd inside the Qudos Bank Arena was cheering for epic plays, amongst other things, we sat down with fer in the press room to hear his thoughts about MIBR's recent months. The 27-year-old admitted that their schedule since the Major was less than ideal, and talked about what they will do in the upcoming downtime.

Can you tell me your thoughts on coming to IEM Sydney? Last year it didn't go so well, so obviously, you wanted to leave a better impression, and you started by playing the same opponent that eliminated you last year, Grayhound.

Last year, of course, we didn't do great, but this year we have our old lineup that always wants to win and is used to win. That is the good and bad part, because when you are used to winning, every time you lose it is bad. But I think nowadays we have our feet on the ground, we know that we are not a top team, the top 3-4, I don't know. But we know that Liquid is playing really good and I'm not disappointed. I'm satisfied, not with the result, but with what we are doing right now. I think we are going the right way with our team.

With Grayhound, I remember that we lost against them, they are underdogs like every time we play against them, but of course, they are a really good team, and as I always say, when you play against underdogs they have nothing to lose and they take risks that normally they don't take. Last time they surprised us and this time we are more solid. We are like "we are not SK from 2017 so lets play with full focus". Because if you lose against those teams [like Grayhound], you will never be top again. I think our mentality is better right now, but of course, the scenario is hard as well. We just have to keep it up, keep it working, and we are going to get there.

During the tournament, some members of your team mentioned in interviews that you have some new stuff prepared, maybe you didn't want to show it early in the tournament, some things you maybe showed later on. Where do the new ideas come from for you? These five players have played together a lot so it must be hard some times to figure out new stuff and get new ideas?

We have zews and he loves to create new stuff, but when we are practicing in North America it is hard to reproduce everything. Because sometimes you are playing against teams that don't take it as seriously as in Europe, so if we try new stuff, they will take risks that on LAN they would never take... so you can't really test the strat or the new stuff properly.

We are trying new stuff with zews, new strats, but I think the main point in the team is that we are trying to change our style a little bit in some rounds. Of course, people know we like to play passive, to hold more, to spend time, but if you saw the game we played against NRG, they beat us by going fast with three or four strats and caught us off-guard. So we are trying to adapt and add this new fast stuff from people.

I mean, we have some, but sometimes when we are playing officials, when we are on LAN, things get hard for us and we say "Guys, let's do what we are best at", which is the slow pace stuff. But I think that sometimes we have to risk more and that is what we did against Astralis. When you play Astralis, if you play your own game, a normal game, they will read you easily and the game is going to be hard for you. So I think against those teams, Liquid, NRG, good teams that beat us sometimes... not sometimes, a lot of times, you have to risk more. If you are going to just play your game, it is going to be kind of easy for them because they know a lot.

Talking about risks, Overpass has been a map you have been playing quite a lot and that is a classic fer map where you do a lot of aggressive plays on A, towards T connector almost. Do you think that is the best way to play Overpass in general, or is that something that just suits you?

Well, in the beginning, in 2016 or something, I think that all the teams were playing Overpass really aggressive, they were playing Balloons, Fountain, but then people discovered the deep molotov on the Mid stairs and it changed because people fake it and you spend a lot of time trying to get this map control. But I think that playing aggressive is really good, even more on A because the rotation coming from B is really good if you have good information at the beginning of the round. My teammates like to play with information and I like to play for information as well, I like to take the battles at the beginning of the rounds, so every time I have good information we can react better.

On A Overpass, I don't think it is really good to play passively on site because your opponents are going to do an entrance with two smokes, between Truck and Box, so it is hard to cover everything. If you don't have information, people will come in, even with pistols. Against NRG, me with an AWP and FalleN with an AWP as well, we had the double AWP on site, how can you win against force-buys or whatever strat they have with two smokes on site? It is kind of impossible, so you have to take risks and play in front, kill the first guys, have information fast so the backup comes faster, I think that is the easier way to play A on Overpass.

Looking at your result here, as you said, it is OK, it is not great, but at the same time, you are moving in the right direction, that is how you feel. But the Brazilian fanbase and your fanbase, in general, expects you to win, always. Even now that you finished top four and lost to Liquid who is the favorite to win the tournament, a lot of people are not happy with the result. So is it hard to deal with those expectations constantly?

It is funny, because in Brazil, if you win you are a god, you are the best, but if you lose, you are the worst player ever. [laughs] So we are used to that, we know how Brazilians react when you lose, but as I said, this core, we are used to winning so we expect ourselves to win as well. So every time we come to the tournament, we know that we are not on Liquid's level or Astralis' level, we know that, but we are still thinking: "Let's beat these guys because we did it in the past and we can do it again". So we always expect the win.

But I think it is easy to handle the pressure from the fans because we as a team know that we are not as good as we were. Of course, we are good, but I think every team rose in skill level and everything, so it is harder nowadays. For us, it is easy because we just have to read the good comments, not get too stressed because of people flaming you or something. We know how Brazilians are so I think it is easy because of that.

This is the last tournament of this very busy period for MIBR, you only have the EPL group stage that only lasts a couple of days coming up. What is the plan moving forward since you have a bit more time to practice?

I think we felt that we didn't prepare for tournaments because we play a lot of them. For the Major we had good preparation, we had a bootcamp to prepare, and besides the Major, we didn't prepare ourselves to actually win tournaments. We were just playing tournaments expecting to win, but we were not preparing to win, you know? I think that was the bad part.

But now I think we have a month and a half at home, practicing, so the plan is just to practice, fix everything, and get the new stuff I told you about done. Practice more, test everything as we want to do. That is the plan, practice more and have really good preparation for the tournaments. I think what we were doing was crazy because we were just playing tournaments expecting to win, I don't think that is a good way to approach it.