FalleN: "Teams in Brazil have been playing some strong CS"

FalleN and company are 2-0 at the Americas RMR after a close match against Liquid.

Since the additions of Gabriel "⁠FalleN⁠" Toledo and Marcelo "⁠chelo⁠" Cespedes to FURIA's lineup in July 2023, the Brazilian side have posted up-and-down results. The team enjoyed a trophy hoist at Elisa Masters Espoo in November 2023, but have otherwise failed to find success in various events, both on LAN and online.

Despite these inconsistent results, FURIA still entered PGL Copenhagen Americas RMR as one of the favorites to qualify for the Major. After notching an opening victory against Nouns, FURIA followed things up with a win over Liquid, putting the Brazilians just a single BO3 win away from Copenhagen.

Not long after FURIA's win over Nouns, veteran AWPer and in-game leader FalleN spoke with HLTV regarding the hotly-contested match, how the team has reckoned with their recent form, and his thoughts on the strength of the domestic Brazilian scene.

A close win over Liquid, a couple of clutches that didn't go your way, but a couple of others that were close, did. How does it feel to get that win and now be 2-0?

It feels awesome, a big relief. Everyone in this tournament has only a few games to qualify for the Major, different from the Europe qualification process. Here if you lose two matches, you're out, so I kind of want to stay away from the one defeat match to not suffer the fact you can play a match and go home. So 2-0 feels awesome for everyone playing here.

I told you just before the interview you hadn't beaten cadiaN since 2018. You said you didn't know that, but what is it like finally ending that streak of five consecutive losses to him?

I think we had many close matches against him in the past, including the one when I was in Liquid and they won a 1vs5 in the very last round. I've been pretty close to beating him a lot of times, so I didn't really know that and it doesn't really matter to me.

FURIA have had a rough start to the year. Last year you ended a bit strong with the Elisa win, but then coming into this year, you've faltered in some qualifiers online, lost in Katowice. Your form was questionable coming into this event, so what was the environment in the team like coming here with that in mind with the Major on the line?

There is naturally a lot of pressure on our shoulders to perform. When you create a team that's supposed to represent our country well, win titles and stuff like that, the expectations are super high for everyone involved. So after all those struggles we had recently and all those tournaments that didn't go the way we wanted, we had to buckle up, just think about ourselves, and get the team better with each game we play. Not think too much about the outside comments from haters, all those things, you kinda have to shield yourself and I think we have been doing that pretty well.

Including a change in our approach in terms of the work as well, we have put in a lot of work in different ways which is helping us lately. We just have to keep grinding, there are a lot of good teams playing around right now. It's a new game and it's very difficult to be favorites every time.

When you say you've made changes in your approach, what do you mean?

I would say that we have been finding the energy to put some more work after the work. A little bit more extra work, the extra mile, so that has been helpful. There are a couple of changes that the coach and analyst have been doing as well, in terms of how we're preparing, how we're setting up our strategies and things like that, and that's paying off.

Do you mean individual deathmatch kind of work, or talking more about server work, demo watching, et cetera?

I would say all of those, like chelo has been DMing a lot, that's the way he likes to put more work, he has sharp aim and he's putting a lot of effort into that. For the others, there's different ways they're helping, so I'd say a little bit of everything.

We've heard a lot from FURIA over the last two years about a lot of changes you've tried to make to find the solution, to find consistent results. What is going to be different this time to actually be the kind of FURIA that we expect to see?

Well, if anyone has the formula to be beating everyone every single time, you've got to tell us! Maybe Vitality, maybe Spirit, those guys have been playing some insane CS lately and they are able to do stuff like that, but even then there can be a way of losing some matches.

So I'm not thinking about how we can become the team that's never going to lose, it's more about finding the resilience to learn and grow with each match so you can become a better group for a long time. That's more where my look is at, but definitely the things I just mentioned are helping us, and the fact that we give ourselves a lot of patience as well is going to be helpful because it's not easy to create a superteam from out of nowhere. It's been six months.

There's definitely a lot of strategy aspects that they wanted me to bring when I came to the team, and we realized that it was a little bit too difficult for everyone involved to play under my ideas of the game above all, so we came to a middle ground toward that and it's been paying off. Slowly and easier we are meshing those two ideas together and changing between when we need them.

As such a tenured captain, what was it like relinquishing a bit of that control?

I don't really mind. Every time I go to a team, I try to give everything I have to help the team the most I can. If it's about my leadership I'm going to be there, if it's about me calling I will be there. When I was calling arT was helping a lot, and now that arT is calling, I'm helping a lot too, like in a couple of rounds I am giving some ideas.

It's really good, we have two different ideas to direct the match, which can be beneficial if you know how to mesh them. Of course, you can think on the worst aspects and think that they're going to be clashing, that each one is going to want to do something differently, but that's exactly what we're working on so that we can get more on the same page.

As I said, you're 2-0 now, so one best-of-three away from qualifying for the Major. Looking at the rest of the event, how do you feel about going through?

It feels like we have two BO3s now, we've got to win one and the job is not done. Like definitely a lot of teams in Brazil have been playing some strong CS, we've been playing some qualification matches there, we've watched some matches and there has constantly been teams beating each other. Including 9z, like they're not even here and they have been doing some damage in South America lately.

The level of the teams in Brazil is not the same as it was like 6-7 years ago, where you know that if you get a Brazilian team, you're going to smash them, it's not like that. The job is not done, we've got to keep ourselves focused and work the whole day to get ready for tomorrow.

One other topic that has come up a lot is the quality of practice in South America and North America. zews said that it's very different now as well. How are you feeling about where FURIA is able to practice, going to Europe sometimes, being able to come here sometimes?

For FURIA we have been very Europe-based lately, mainly because every single time we have some free time we go for a bootcamp in Malta, we have a facility there. We understand that practice in those regions are less fruitful than the practice in Europe, and that's why we stay there. There's still a big difference, for sure.

Lastly just talking about the performance of the team a bit and the players, we saw KSCERATO drop off a bit, but he's coming back into his own, you said chelo is putting in a lot of work. How has the work been from the individuals on their consistency coming into this?

I don't know the answer for that exactly. I'm not really paying attention to who is playing well here and there. There is definitely some variance when it comes to who is performing or not, but we always look only at if the team is winning or not, like what needs to be done.

Of course you want to go individually and see which maps you're playing well, which maps you have to work better on, but people can do their work for themselves individually. My mind is always on how the team is performing and the macro things.