FalleN: "I do believe we have the team to be able to do bigger things"

The Brazilian veteran has his sights set on a playoff run in Lisbon.

It has been a rough start to the year for FURIA, who crashed out of BLAST Bounty in 9th-16th place, were eliminated from IEM Katowice's group stage after two matches, and couldn't go beyond the Swiss stage at ESL Pro League 21 despite playing close matches against MOUZ and Falcons.

Acknowledging that the last few months have been "a bit of a rollercoaster," Gabriel "⁠FalleN⁠" Toledo prefers to focus on the positives, including the amount of reps that the team had in Pro League. This has allowed FURIA to tidy up their map pool, but the lack of consistency in terms of individual performances remains an issue.

 "I believe that we really need to perform a little better to close out maps where we come close to winning and really find more quality in everyone's game," he told HLTV on media day.

The veteran in-game leader and AWPer also expanded on his recent comments about his team still being in a building phase despite having the same roster for nearly ten months. " From my point of view, any team that hasn't yet managed to reach a tier-S level and win tournaments is in the building stage until it no longer exists," he explained.

The question on many minds is whether this FURIA roster has run its course. FalleN maintains that he still has faith that the team can turn the corner and become more consistent against all sorts of opposition.

"I believe the team still has a lot of desire, a lot of work and a lot of quality to, as a whole, emerge among the best," he said. "That's what we believe in and work on. As a team member and captain, there's no way to work with a team if you don't believe that."

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You were top-16 at BLAST Bounty and Katowice and top 14 in Pro League. How would you rate your first months of the year?

It has not been a very good first quarter in terms of results. We wanted to and could have gone a little farther. The way in which the defeats happened, on the one hand, makes us very sad because some games slipped away at key moments, and on the other hand, in a way, it shows that we have the potential and are capable of playing better than we have been, right?

 So I think you can look at it both ways. And the start of the year was a bit disappointing in that sense, but I guess that's part of it, right? It's about striving for better results, and we have the opportunity to do that in a few days' time.

What positives did you take from your Pro League run? Stage 1 wasn't very smooth but then in Stage 2, you had very close games against MOUZ and Falcons that could have gone your way.

We didn't play our best game throughout Pro League. It was very difficult to get through Stage 1. We had a few games against teams that were below us in the rankings and we didn't manage to show absolute superiority. On the other hand, against teams that are in theory better than us, we played some very close matches, in some of which we even had a great chance of winning. I'm talking about the MOUZ and Falcons games.

So it's been a bit of a rollercoaster, we have not been consistent in our level. And I think the positive we took was an evolution in our map pool. We played some maps we hadn't played that often. That allowed us to evolve in some of those maps. A negative we took is our Dust2, where we had been playing very well, with 12 victories and two defeats on it, I believe, and we lost some games in a row.  So it was a wake-up call for us to work on the map again and try to correct its course so that it can be good again.

Overall, I think these changes to the map pool have been positive, there have been some developments in that sense, but the feeling of the tournament was that we can play as well as the best, but at the same time we're still lacking the quality to exert dominance over some lower-ranked teams.

What do you think you're missing against those teams? Is it motivation? Is it a matter of not being as prepared for those teams, who are in theory weaker?

 No, it's definitely not a question of lack of motivation or preparation. I think that all the games we've been playing have been quite similar in terms of how we prepare for and approach them. I have the feeling that we're missing a bit more performance, at times individually and at times collectively. We're missing some things that can lead to matches going in different ways. We need to perform better in some situations so that games can get a bit easier. There were many matches in this Pro League where one kill, one round, one decision made the game snowball and become much more difficult.

There were several moments that I looked at and I could see that a match could have been much easier if these things hadn't happened, you know? So I think it's really a matter of performance. We really need to perform a little better.

I was looking at your results this year, and one thing I found curious was that you've only won one of your seven games against European teams this year. What do you think you've been missing in your matches against European teams?

 I believe that we really need to perform a little better to close out maps where we come close to winning and really find more quality in everyone's game. We played several matches at the end of last year against European teams as well, and we had a lot of success in them. The situation isn't very different from last year, so it's really a question of being able to improve in some ways, to perform better when we need to in some moments so that the victories can come.

I saw some of your recent comments about how the team is still in the building phase. And I thought it was curious because the team has been together for so long and skullz, the most recent team member, has been on the team for eight months already.

 From my point of view, any team that hasn't yet managed to reach a tier-S level and win tournaments is in the building stage until it no longer exists. Every team strives for internal evolution, evolution as players and as a group, with a view to reaching the level where you can challenge for trophies. So when I say we're in the building phase it's because we haven't managed to reach that level yet.

I've been with FURIA for a year and a half, we've reached the Elisa final, the Rio semi-finals, and I think those were the highest points we've had in tournaments.  So there's no way we've managed to get to where we want to be, which is to be a team that is among the best and goes into competitions knowing that it's going to get to the big playoffs, knowing that it's going to have a chance of reaching a final and eventually winning it. So that's what I'm referring to. We're still a team that is trying to find that best work from everyone so that the team can reach that level. Until it gets there, it will always be in a building phase.

Looking at your results, you can sometimes measure up well against teams higher in the ranking — even though you might not be able to beat them in the end — and at the same time you're having trouble against teams that are weaker on paper. It seems like there is a barrier and this might be the limit of what you can achieve and that maybe something has to change. Do you still believe that this is the right team to return to the top with?

 I do believe that we have the team to be able to do bigger things. I believe that it's possible to build good teams in different ways. Nowadays, you have some teams that are very good because they have some players who are head and shoulders above the rest, I think that the vast majority of teams today have one player, sometimes two, who really plays much better than his teammates and the players on other teams.

You get a ZywOo, a m0NESY, a donk… These are guys who are playing much better than the rest and that makes the difference. But it's also possible to put together teams that, as a whole, can be strong and have other attributes that will make up for the lack of these great players that are the difference-makers, right?

Regarding playing smaller teams, I think this has come up more this year. Last year, we were having very convincing games against teams at our level and below. We were in this situation where we were almost breaking the barrier of beating the top teams. You could see last year that we were close to doing that. We had a first match against Spirit last year where we just had no chance. In our second match against them, we felt we came close to beating them, and in the third match we did beat them. Our progress last year was gradual but it happened, and this year we weren't able to pick up where we left off.

We've had some good games against top teams but we haven't managed to beat them that often, and the smaller teams have started to give us more trouble and we've lost some games. I believe the team still has a lot of desire, a lot of work and a lot of quality to, as a whole, emerge among the best. That's what we believe in and work on. As a team member and captain, there's no way to work with a team if you don't believe that.

There's no point in joining FURIA and complaining that I'm not ZywOo or that I don't have a donk. That's not how it works. We're trying to find the best use for our players and we have great players too, we have very solid players. We have players who came from other teams and are doing very well, like skullz. We have KSCERATO and yuurih, who are among the best Brazilian players we've had in recent years. And we're trying to make improvements, especially in my game, chelo's game, and how we play as a whole, so we can achieve the results we want.

I wanted to touch on your CT sides a little bit. I recently read that Mirage is the only map where you have a better win-round percentage on the CT side in the last three months. What issues have you identified on your CT side?

 We realized that, naturally, because we put a lot of work into our T side in practice and also because it's part of my job and my responsibility to make sure that we're going to run interesting rounds that make sense, we feel that our work on the T side happens in a very natural way.

I found a lot of differences in how to think about the game with this FURIA core after playing so long under arT and having other ideas about the game. It took a few months for some of the notions on how to approach the T side to balance out and for us to begin to think the same way faster. And I feel that this is happening satisfactorily now, and that's why we play good T sides in general.

Now, when it comes to our defensive side, I think it naturally requires more individual understanding than collective of what the round needs. There are many things that happen during a match where responsibility and decision-making lie with each player, although it's always possible to add a layer of reasoning to what the defense is looking for as a whole that round. And we've been working together with sidde and our analysts on trying to improve the way we see the game as a whole and make our decision-making better in certain moments, based on what we expect from rounds.

On some maps we've managed to do it fairly quickly. But on some others, this has got in the way at times. A great example of that was Anubis in Pro League. In our attempt to improve our CT side, to put more effort and more thought into it, when it came to playing the matches, our execution wasn't working out very well. So we had to re-evaluate, change some of the things we had thought about and play again some of the CT [strategies] that had flowed much better.

So I think it's a learning process and we've put a lot of effort into improving our CT sides, because we feel that it's something that, if improved, will greatly improve our game. But as I said, CT sides require performance.  We can think of a million things about how we're going to defend things.

When opponents make a push, we need the kills, we need the multi-kills, we need the teamplay. And we need to change the way we defend as well.  We're playing in an era of CS where the opponent will have an easy time choosing the best strategies if he sees what your defense is like, he'll know where the weakest points are, where he can more easily make hits. So it's very necessary to find the balance between how much you vary your defense and how much you leave holes in those exchanges, because every time you play in a different way, you also create different problems. And we're trying to develop this as quickly as possible to improve our CT sides.

What are your expectations for this tournament? You are going up against NAVI first. You lost to them in Katowice and they're a team that many people say is in crisis because their latest results haven't been good. Do you want to take advantage of that to get off to a good start?

Being completely honest, the level of this tournament is very high. NAVI, G2, MongolZ… any opponent here that is above us in the ranking is tough. Even though NAVI haven't been at their best, they're still a great team. Of course, it's much better to face them when they're struggling a bit than when they've just won a Major, so the moment does matter.  But for us, when it comes down to it, it doesn't matter, we really need to focus on us and on playing our best game. We know it's possible to beat them, and we've done it in the past. If you take, for example, our Rio run at the end of last year, we beat FaZe, NAVI and MOUZ to go straight to the semi-finals.

 And here our goal is to qualify for the playoffs as soon as possible. I think the team's dream scenario here would be to go through with two wins. But we'll deal with each game as it comes. Regardless of how things go, we will do our best to qualify. We believe that getting to the playoffs is a realistic goal. That's something that we haven't been able to achieve and that would be a great achievement for us.

Have you looked at the match you played against them in Katowice?

 We're going to have a lot of time to prepare for this match, and we're going to think about one or two options for our pick. In the last match we played against them, they had a very good Dust2, which was one of the few Dust2 games we lost out of the 14 we played.  I believe that we will really need to focus on choosing our map pick well, playing it well, winning it, trying to do well on their pick and being ready for a third map.

Since it's a match-up that has been determined for a long time, we have a lot of time to prepare for it. It's not like when you have four or five hours to prepare for the next game and so on. So we have this luxury of being able to do that, and more than that, I think it's about trying to find comfort playing as a team, trying to find the performance and trying to play most rounds on the same page so we have the greatest chance of victory. It's about facing them as equals, which I'm sure we can do, and we will have here, at the start of this BLAST tournament, another opportunity to prove that.