insani: "We are crossing a line that we have not crossed before"

The fifth-highest-rated player of the Opening Stage was a little worried after his team went down 1-2, but is happy with their recovery.

MIBR reached the top-16 stage of the Perfect World Shanghai Major after blasting past FlyQuest in the 2-2 round, becoming the third Brazilian team to advance after FURIA and paiN locked in spots the previous day.

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MIBR drub FlyQuest to reach Elimination Stage in Shanghai

The result adds to MIBR's continued upturn in the last two months, during which they made the semi-final at ESL Pro League Season 20 and swapped Lucas "⁠Lucaozy⁠" Neves for Breno "⁠brnz4n⁠" Poletto before waltzing through the Americas RMR undefeated.

The squad, powered by a 1.45-rated showing from Felipe "⁠insani⁠" Yuji over eight maps, started their Major campaign with a win over Virtus.pro but needed to recover from the 1-2 pool after suffering losses to The MongolZ and Passion UA.

"I was a little bit worried," insani admitted to HLTV about MIBR's run through the Opening Stage. "I'm not happy with those losses that we had, but I'm happy that we managed to win two BO3s and go to the Elimination Stage."

Harder opposition awaits ahead, but insani remains confident in his team's abilities as they look to correct mistakes before the battle for the Major playoffs begins.

"I know that we are going to face a lot more opponents that are better, and I know we have to play better to keep it up."

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

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insani, parabens, you're through to the Elimination Stage. Got a little close with the 3-2 record, but then this game was pretty comfortable for you. How are you feeling?

Yeah, I'm feeling good right now because we managed to do it, to go to the Elimination Stage. I was a little bit worried because we had a great run in the Americas RMR, we went 3-0, I was pretty confident after we were 1-0 in the Opening Stage against Virtus.pro, but then we went 1-2.

I'm not happy with those losses that we had, but I'm happy that we managed to win two BO3s and go to the Elimination Stage, I know that we are going to face a lot more opponents that are better, and I know we have to play better to keep it up.

How does that feel for you to be able to come here, play your first Major, and then also get to the next stage?

To be honest, I'm pretty comfortable with where I am. I know that we can go a lot further here at the Major, but I'm just really excited to play, I'm happy, having fun with my teammates, and I know that we are playing good. I'm having a good experience here at my first Major and hopefully we'll keep it up.

You've been playing well for a while, for the longest time you were the main person to watch on this team and it always made it exciting but the results weren't quite there yet. Recently you've had this upturn, you have drop in-game leading now, you have Lucaozy who's come in, you made that run at EPL. How does it feel with some of these changes for you?

I think every change that we made in the past months turned out pretty good for us. I know that we are evolving each day and we are crossing a line that we have not crossed before.

We went to the semi-finals at the ESL Pro League, we are in the Elimination Stage of the Major, that shows us that we're on the correct path and that we're doing the right things. We just have to keep working hard and keep working every day.

It did take a while to get to this point. Was there ever frustration for you at that?

There's always frustration when you know you are capable of things but the results are not coming. Of course, there is that frustration but we can never give up and we can never think of going back. We just have to trust the process and trust in the changes that we made and every move we make, and it's paying out now.

It is, and you also have the crowd on your side a little bit, they've been cheering for you. How has that felt?

I'm feeling pretty good, the crowd is amazing, everyone shows their love for us and especially when the crowd is on our side I think it's better for us to play.

Even when they are not cheering for us, for example against Rare Atom, I think they are amazing, they are very noisy, they are making a lot of noise, so that's good. And it's a very good crowd to play with.

The top eight European teams are going to be in the next stage, there's going to be harder opposition, and as we said, you did end up struggling a little bit here before getting through. How is the general feeling going into that with some harder teams ahead?

As you go further in the tournament you are going to face better opponents. We have to take everything that we can from the losses we had and try to extract and fix every error that we made.

Hopefully we will have a great match-up against them. We know there are going to be tough matches, but we know that we can win and we can beat every team on the road. We just have to keep confidence in ourselves and we are going to make it.

Lastly, I wanted to get your thoughts on what it's been like playing with Lucaozy because he came in just before this RMR cycle kicked off. How has that been?

When Lucaozy came to the team, he came from a very different team. They had a different play style, so It was kinda hard for us to be in sync, to be on the same page.

He shared some roles with you before, right?

Yeah, he played some major roles with me and when he joined, we already started playing tournaments, so we didn't have too much time to practice.

But after the RMR, we had two weeks of preparation and we fixed a lot of things, we had a lot of conversations that helped us to be a better team, and I think it helped Lucaozy to adapt to our team as well. I think we are doing a pretty good job, he's playing very well, I think he's more comfortable in the team right now.

No issues for you adjusting to that with any of the roles you had to swap or anything?

I think everyone knows that every change that we make is for the better, so we don't have to be like, 'Oh, I don't want to do it, I don't want to do that,' because everyone wants the same thing: to win and to play the best CS that we can. I am comfortable with every change that we make.