exit: "I knew that if we signed Lucaozy, we were going to get to the Major"

MIBR return to a Major after missing out on Rio, Paris and Copenhagen.

MIBR are one of the biggest organizations in Brazil, but their recent results have not been worthy of that tag. They missed out on three Majors in a row before the Shanghai RMRs and came into the tournament with a fair bit of pressure, according to Raphael "⁠exit⁠" Lacerda.

In China, however, they leveled up their game with their new addition, Lucas "⁠Lucaozy⁠" Neves, progressing to the Major with a flawless 3-0 record after defeating Complexity in the deciding match.

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Their firepower, as usual, came from the star duo of Felipe "⁠insani⁠" Yuji and Lucaozy, but it was exit who topped the charts after ditching the IGL burden and returning to his favorite role.

After the win against Complexity, the Brazilian rifler spoke to HLTV about MIBR's road in Shanghai, Lucaozy's integration into the team, and his feelings about finally returning to a Major.

If you cannot see the Soundcloud embed above, listen to the interview here.

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First of all, congrats, you've just made the Major. How does it feel? I see you've got some tears in your eyes.

It feels amazing, it has been, like, two years since my last Major. We played three RMRs and lost, and coming here to China and beating everyone and going 3-0, I didn't expect that. I'm super happy, and I can't describe it in a few words.

You say you had played at a lot of RMRs but had not made it despite getting very close. Does that add some extra weight to the qualification?

For sure. We always come to the RMR with a lot of pressure because we play for MIBR, one of the biggest organizations in Brazil. It has been months of preparation to get this spot, not just a week-long bootcamp. We've been working our asses off for a long time. I'm super happy that we are achieving our goals.

You won against KRU and Imperial and then got Complexity, one of the toughest teams here. Walk me through the game today, did you expect that it would be 2-0?

I expected it, to be honest, because we said to each other that we could beat anyone here if we played like yesterday. So we just chilled, played our game, and our communication was really good again. It's very important that we talk a lot, and today we did that. I was expecting [it], I was super confident.

You gave up IGLing a couple of months ago. How has that been, because it feels like you've improved your individual impact a lot?

I knew that when I was asked to not be the IGL, my individual level was going to improve. When you are not the IGL, you don't need to say everything that the other players need to do. It was hard in the beginning, because when you are used to being the IGL, you control everything, and when I was not, I couldn't say a lot of words.

But I played almost my whole career in the role that I'm doing right now, so I'm super confident, I just needed some time. Everyone is doing a great job in the team and I think we are going in a good direction, so I'm happy.

One of the recent changes was the addition of Lucaozy. How has he adapted to playing in a new team?

Lucaozy played a very different role and a very different way in his last team. He needed to adapt to a lot of things in our team, but of course, we adapted a few things for him, because he is a very good player. Sometimes he has a different mindset inside the game, but it's very good because we need that. We need that guy who sometimes goes crazy, pushes some smokes, and does some crazy stuff.

I knew that if we signed Lucaozy, we were going to get to the Major because for me, he is one of the best Brazilian players. He has been doing a very good job for a long time, and I'm a friend of his. I used to play with him in Sharks. He is doing really well and I'm happy that we are evolving.

Talking about evolving. When he came, he didn't play like the Lucaozy we knew from before, but it feels like here at the RMR he kind of leveled up. Did you do anything special ahead of this tournament?

When he joined the team, we didn't have any time to practice at all. Let's say he joined on the 10th, and on the 11th we already needed to play some tournaments. We were trying to put together some stuff, to tell him the strats and the way we wanted to play. But we were playing in tournaments, so it was not a good week because we didn't have any time to practice.

Before coming to the RMR we had two weeks of practice in Portugal, and it was very important because you could see that we are playing differently at this RMR. We are playing way better than we were, so it was a very good time to adapt to everything and for us to play the way that we want to play. I think everyone is on the same page right now, which could be seen inside the game.

You've made the Major. What are your expectations?

Our expectations are high, I want to go to the playoffs at least. Of course, we have a big job to do. We'll be practicing here in China, we also have some European teams coming here right now, so I think we are going to have good practice. We are going to keep working hard, but my confidence is very high right now. Now we are focusing on the Major, where we will try to do our best, and hopefully go to the playoffs at least.