arT: "The feeling in the team is unanimous, everyone wants to go to the next stage"

We had a quick chat with Andrei "⁠arT⁠" Piovezan to hear about how FURIA spent the player break and what they think they can do at the Major.

The Brazilian team managed a confident win in their opening game, taking down HellRaisers 16-6 on Inferno. arT was pivotal in the game, controlling Banana with the AWP for the majority of the map.

Following the game, we had a short interview with arT before he left the venue together with his team, awaiting their opponent in the second round of the Swiss stage of the Main Qualifier.

You've been playing a lot in the first half of the year, then the player break came up. What did you do in the few weeks since the Minor to refresh and come back into the tournament circuit?

Yeah, that was our first break since we started with FURIA, our first vacation. So we took two weeks vacation in Brazil and we went back to Poland one week prior to the Major. We bootcamped there for one week.

How happy are you with the level you've been performing at in practices, considering the break?

Oh, it was very good actually. On the first day it was not so good (laughs), the aim was not so crisp. But on the next day and the following days until the end, we were playing very well.

What was the feeling like for you guys, this time it is kind of different with the small audience that they have here? What was the general feeling in the team?

The feeling in the team is unanimous, everyone wants to go to the next stage. Everyone is feeling like we want to get to the next stage, and become Legends.

Talking about the HellRaisers game, your opening game here. What was the preparation like considering they are a team that didn't play that much on the big stages and at big tournaments this year?

I feel like the preparation was mainly playing our game, as always. I watched three maps of them to chose what we want to play, because we have a general idea how they want to play, even though they haven't played so many matches in the past month. We were deciding between two or three maps, and we are very confident on Inferno so it was just good for us.

The player break happened so we don't know which players are in-form, which are not. So from your experience and your expectations, who do you think are going to be the toughest teams to deal here in the first stage?

I actually think that if we face Dreameaters it is going to be a hard game. Because we scrimmed against them and we thought they are very good players, a very good team, and I was impressed by their game against NRG. I think they are going to be tough if we face them.

Moving forward, what is the thinking like after this win, what are you going to be doing preparing for the next match?

We are just going to rest a little, wait for our next opponent to be known so we can do a little research and talk a little bit about the game. But we will mainly just concentrate on being focused.