saffee: "Since the beginning of the year, it's not been pretty"

"We need to take every tournament as a qualifier for the Major," the Brazilian AWPer added.

MIBR ended 2024 on a high note after reaching the Shanghai Major Elimination Stage, where they narrowly missed out on a playoff appearance.

The future looked bright for Rafael "⁠saffee⁠" Costa and company, but their start to 2025 has been far from ideal. MIBR won just two matches against international competition across three events, and saffee admits the team hasn't solved their struggles.

"I have no clue," he said when asked about their lack of results. "It's just been a really tough start of the season for us as a team."

The Brazilian AWPer also spoke about the clash against Astralis, their event schedule, and their expectations for the rest of the year.

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Commiserations on the loss, you're out of the tournament early. How disappointing does that feel?

It's really disappointing and sad. I don't know, it's just been a tough start of the season for us as a team individually, I think. It's really sad that we just got one win here, and we are leaving the tournament now.

When you had 49 kills on Mirage and couldn't win that map, did you just think it's not your day today?

Not really, I don't think that much about it. But I think the energy that everybody put into the map and not coming out with the victory is really exhausting. But we did the comeback on Inferno, so it was good. It is how it is.

You mentioned that you had a rough start to the year. At the Shanghai Major, you played really well, but after that, it feels like you haven't got going. Why do you think that is?

I have no clue. You know, we've been working really hard. At the start of the season, we came to Europe to bootcamp and played BLAST there. We stayed for like one or two weeks bootcamping, and then we went back to Brazil. I think we didn't have that much time to bootcamp in Europe, to be honest. Now, we're gonna be bootcamping for two weeks here. I think that's where we need to step up and work even harder than we are.

You talked about going back and forth between Brazil and Europe. You had a pretty tough schedule because you had some qualifiers in Brazil. Because the VRS is so important now, does it make your schedule a bit harder?

Yes and no. I think you can skip some of them if you try to focus on the big tournaments, but we didn't do this, but it is what it is. I think now we have time to watch the matches and try to figure out what's going wrong, because, since the beginning of the year, it's not been pretty.

Talking about the VRS, where you guys are one of the teams that are on the cusp of invites. Does that maybe add a bit more pressure to perform now and avoid losing some invites in the future?

Yes, of course. We need to take every tournament as a qualifier for the Major, which is the most important tournament of the season. And of course, we need to play with pressure, try to step up, and try to earn points.

You have EPL In a couple of weeks, then you have Melbourne. How will you approach these next few events to bounce back to the form you showed in Shanghai?

We're going to bootcamp before Pro League, and I think it's going to be really good for us because we're going to have time to review the matches and try to figure out what's going wrong. We need time to do that. EPL and Melbourne are two tournaments that we like to play, we've been to an EPL semi-final, and we won a tournament in Melbourne, which was the Challenger, but still. Those are two tournaments that we like to play, and I'm definitely looking forward to us coming back.