dupreeh: "We just needed to feel that we could win something"

Beating BetBoom was a morale booster for the international squad.

Falcons got a crucial victory at BetBoom Dacha, where they beat BetBoom in a three-map series that helped the international team gain some confidence by showing they could win a series.

It also allowed the European squad to get revenge on BetBoom, one of the three teams Falcons lost to at ESL Pro League during their journey in Malta, where they came in 21st-28th place with only scalp on their belt, that of the struggling TYLOO.

Date	Matches
BetBoom Dacha Belgrade 2024
17/05/2024	Falcons 14:00 Virtus.pro	Match
14/05/2024	Virtus.pro Finished 2:0 Falcons	Match
15/05/2024	BetBoom Finished 1:2 Falcons	Match

Having tallied a win and a loss so far in Belgrade, Falcons will now go on to play Virtus.pro — a team they already lost to in the opener — or MOUZ, and will be the underdogs in the decider fight for a spot int he playoffs.

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You just won against BetBoom. It must feel good after your recent struggles, right?

Yeah, we just needed some success. In the end, it doesn't matter what team we beat, we just needed to feel that we could win something. So that was a much-needed thing for the entire team.

You bounced back from losing the first map. Is that even harder when the team is low on confidence?

We played a decent Anubis and had a good lead, but Anubis is still a map that can be hard to play as CT. We really, really tried, and it came down to a few individual mistakes and a few times where we just didn't hit our shots. I think that's the main reason why we lost it, including myself, I had a really bad performance on Anubis.

But it is what it is, we knew that we had two good maps coming up. We also knew it was their map pick, so we didn't take it too seriously, but we knew that we had to start playing better. We were still confident after the loss of Anubis.

You've been in the team now for almost two months. How has this period been for you?

It's been very nice to be back playing at the highest level again, I really enjoy it. We've had some really good practice, especially after coming home from EPL, and we learned a lot. We've had a lot of good talks about reactions and how we want to approach the game.

But obviously we're still struggling in some aspects, and I think we're still getting a lot of knowledge whenever we play. I think that is the key right now, that we just need more time. We need to figure out how we want to approach different situations.

And then, of course, there's also the part that we need to be better individuals. But it also goes hand in hand with the fact that sometimes the communication can be a bit too much on the individual side. And if you're not hitting your shots, then you'll just get punished. There's still a lot of work to be done, but we're taking it one step at a time.

You have a lot of history with Magisk and zonic. Are they a big part of why you chose to join this project?

Yes, of course it was. It was also the offer that made the most sense to me in terms of what type of competition I was going to participate in. I also knew that the system that is currently being used in Falcons is the one we had in Astralis and Vitality. So for me, it's like I jumped right into it.

I know exactly what is expected of me, what is expected of each other, and how we help each other. It was a very easy fit for them, too, in the sense that they didn't have to spend too much time trying to set up a new player in a system that he didn't know about. I'm really enjoying my time and doing my absolute best to try and show it on the server.

Your first LAN tournament at EPL probably didn't go according to expectations. What do you think was the biggest obstacle for you in Malta?

Time is the biggest asset for us right now, that's what we need the most. I've been on the team for one and a half months now, and I still think that we're improving day by day. We can see that whenever we play.

Just from the game against VP yesterday, we looked completely clueless on Mirage, but we had a really good talk about what we need to add, so we learn something all the time. It would be different if we were just sitting after every loss and didn't know what to do.

So I think it's a learning process. It's just hard to play against these people, a very well-drilled team, where you just get punished, and it's hard to find solutions. But of course, at EPL, it was more about a low individual level.

It has been better this tournament, and I just hope that we will continue developing throughout the tournament. We have a tough game ahead against either MOUZ or VP to qualify for playoffs, so it's going to be a hard matchup, but you've got to play well to go there.

Do you maybe have a preference? VP also have a relatively new player, and they're in a transitional phase as well.

I think those teams play two very different styles. You need to prepare well for both of them and you also need to adapt a little bit as individuals. We had a pretty okay showing against VP on Vertigo yesterday.

I feel like we should have won that one, but then Mirage was a shitshow, that's how it is. MOUZ is probably full of confidence coming from the win at EPL, but maybe also a little bit tired.

Both teams are great, so I don't think there's going to be an easy matchup tomorrow. Whatever team we go up against will be the one that determines if we can go through, but we need to keep playing better and better if we want to beat one of those teams.

You say you want to keep improving. You have BetBoom Dacha, then IEM Dallas, and then ESL Challenger Jönköping just before the summer break. What would you guys like to achieve until then?

I would probably be aiming too high if I said we wanted to achieve a title before the break. I think that is too early for us. Considering the standards that we put up in the last couple of events, I think just reaching the playoffs is probably the goal. Reaching the arena in Dallas would be great. That would be a very nice thing to achieve, and just take it one game at a time from there.

Going to Jönköping, the event is not as stacked as some of the others. We also need to have a good showing there for the rankings, so we can hopefully get into the Cologne Play-In. I don't even know exactly how that looks, but we need to start showing some better results if we want to have a chance to go there because missing out on Cologne would be a huge disaster for all of us.

We just need to keep improving and doing better. I think that's the main goal for the team, and that's what we focus on as individuals. We need to fix our mistakes, have better reactions, just keep working, and leave out what everyone else thinks about the team right now.

You mentioned that the community has a lot of opinions about your team. When Falcons came in, they had this big plan of making a super team. Does that make it harder for you guys to have the time you need to improve and trust the process?

It's always been really difficult when teams come out and say that this is a super team. It's very easy to look stupid if you don't win tournament after tournament, and it's been happening for so many teams. The latest Cloud9 edition, the old Cloud9 edition, NAVI probably also had a super team once.

The only team that maybe lives up to the expectations of a super team is FaZe, and they have forever, I don't know how they do that.

It has had an impact on some of the players in the team, I'm pretty sure. I'm relatively new to the whole Falcons project, but I think the expectations were and are still high, and they have not been met yet. We also know that it's a process that takes time, and I think we're slowly moving in the direction where I feel like the whole pressure, in some sense, has kind of disappeared.

Maybe it was there three months ago, but now it's getting smaller and smaller. The worse results you create, the more people don't care. This was a huge step in the right direction for the team.