fer: "There is a lot of pressure on kNg because people think he's the savior of the team; with time he will destroy everyone"

After MIBR survived a scare from GAMERZONE in the opening round of Group B at V4 Future Sports Festival, we sat down with Fernando "⁠fer⁠" Alvarenga to get his point of view on the addition of Vito "⁠kNgV-⁠" Giuseppe and the Brazilians' shaky start in Budapest.

MIBR have advanced to the winners' match of Group B, but it wasn't without issues as expected, as the Brazilian side barely scraped by the team who made it to the event via the Hungarian qualifier, GAMERZONE, in a 2-1 series.

After the close series, we had a chance to ask fer about the opening struggles as well as about MIBR's addition of his former teammate kNgV-.

Back at BLAST Los Angeles, before anything was set in stone, you said that you wanted to play with kNg again — how has it been to play alongside him again these past few weeks?

As people know, I played with kNg in 2014 or 2013 and, at that time, he was pretty good, he was a guy I really liked to play with because his team spirit is really, really good, so I loved to play with him. We tried a couple of times to invite him to our team, but there were some internal problems that he couldn't join at the time. This time, it's just amazing that I'm playing with him, he's a guy that I love as a person, as well, and in-game I have nothing to say, he's a beast. I'm just happy to play with him again, I'm pretty sure we're going to make history together.

Tell me about your debut at Moscow, where you were very close to a final appearance, were you happy with that in your first time playing with kNg?

I think we had a great result for us in Moscow. If we had got like one more round... We had a round on Mirage against ENCE where suNny one-shot me with a Deagle and just defused the bomb straight, there were really silly rounds that we lost, but overall I'm happy with the result. I'm not satisfied because we were there to win, but we had one week to practice with kNg, so we were trying to solve the problems that we had in the past because kNg is not the savior, he didn't come to save our team, he came to add to our team. I know there are a lot of problems that we had in the past and we're trying to fix, so I think Moscow was good for us overall, if we got like one more round we could have gotten to the final, and in BO3s we are pretty good.

What do you think are the main things that you need to fix from when you played with coldzera?

When we were playing with cold, in the beginning everything was really good, of course we had problems in-game, every team does, but at the end of the team we started having problems outside of the game. This is something that shouldn't happen. We live together, we practice every day, so there were some problems that we shouldn't have had, but it wasn't because of the strats, because we used to win and we started losing a lot, we went to China twice to play a tournament that is kind of tier-two and we got frustrated because of the results. Results shouldn't make us so upset, but we did and people were thinking about something else and we started going downhill. Now, with kNg, we're just trying to renew our team, but there are some problems that we have, we lost our confidence from playing some tournaments that we should have had better results at. With kNg, we're trying to work with our psychologist and stuff, we're trying to help our mind, to have a strong mind, that's our main goal right now outside of the game.

So far, based on BLAST, we haven't really seen the same impactful kNg that we saw in his previous teams, why do you think that is?

kNg is a guy that has an individual playstyle, he's not a common guy. In our team right now, I think FalleN is helping him a lot, giving him the AWP a lot so that he gets his confidence in our team, and he's able to do everything that he wants in the team, but there is a system in our team, so he has to adapt. I don't think his individual performance in Moscow was because of that, it's just his first tournament, there is a lot of pressure on him because people think he is the savior of the team, but he knows that he's not. His performance was good, he has really good communication, it helps a lot, so if people are shining it's not because people are playing for themselves, they have help from everyone in the team. I think kNg is doing a great job and he's getting used to playing with us, and with time, he will destroy everyone.

Your first series here at V4 was pretty shaky against GAMERZONE, losing Inferno and struggling on Train. What happened and what did you make of the Hungarian team?

We're trying a lot to fix our Inferno. We know it's not our strongest map, but in practice we are doing well, so I don't know. Our first map of the day was this map, we didn't practice before, and sometimes we just like to go there and practice a little bit because you can't warm up your communication in the game, so I think we did the wrong preparation because we didn't have time to practice. Inferno has been a problem for us for a long time, months ago we didn't have good results map, but this is a map we're trying hard to get better on, so I think that we're going to fix it with time. Inferno is a classic map and there isn't much that has changed in the meta, so we just have to find a way to play it better. I think our bombsite A with TACO, LUCAS1, and kNg, we sometimes have a problem because we're trying to do a lot of things, so sometimes our comms are not that good. Sometimes we like to go four A to help them, to do a setup with four A and one B and we still aren't doing well, so I think it isn't their problem, it's a team problem, we have to fix the setups and have confidence to play in pit, one baits for each other... I think we're kind of disconnected on the map, but I think if we fix this problem we're going to do well in the future.

We didn't know these guys from GAMERZONE, but their AWPer, torzsi, he had a lot of impact on the map and he has an aggressive style, he likes to pick, he's a pretty solid player, he did a lot of damage against us, props to him. They didn't really catch us by surprise, they are the underdogs and just playing the game, they don't have fear, and that's good for them. They are a really good team, we didn't expect them to have really good executions and the map control that they had. They played well, props to them. On Train, I think our T side was good, we had seven rounds, but in the pistol they wrecked us, we lost a silly round in a gunround that we shouldn't have, but we had a strong mind and came back to close the map.