NiKo: "We are a much better team than we were in Cologne"

Falcons' star was happy to play and win in front of loved ones at the Belgrade Arena, and says that this team is much better than the one that lost to FURIA in Cologne.

Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač and his Falcons teammates reached the FISSURE Playground 2 semi-finals after quickly dispatching of paiN in two maps. On top of that, the star rifler got to show off in front of friends and family, who were at the Belgrade arena watching him play and top the scoreboard with a 1.63 rating.

Falcons will now face FURIA — their hangmen at IEM Cologne — in what could prove to be their hardest match yet in Belgrade."It's up to people to decide if we're favorites or not, but we are ready," NiKo said of the upcoming match. "It's gonna be a good game, it's gonna be exciting, and as I said, I'm happy to get another chance to play in this arena and hopefully put on a good show."

Listen to the interview here.

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Congrats on the win, it was a quick 2-0 in the end. Would you say this was a game where the team was just firing on all cylinders?

Yeah. I think we have been firing on all cylinders the whole event, and I'm happy that we could keep up the same energy for the quarter-final, as well. We played some good CS today, and we were ready for the things that they had.

Everyone was feeling good, and the energy was on point despite the game being a bit later than usual. Really happy with the win, I think this win was super important for us for the VRS points for Stage 3. We really wanted to secure Stage 3 and, you know, kind of avoid what happened at the previous Major, so happy with the win.

How did it feel to play in front of your home crowd? Because even though it's not the biggest, once you guys started playing, it got pretty loud.

It is the first time that I have an event in kind of my home country. I expect more people to come tomorrow, I expect to be even louder tomorrow. But yeah, they were pretty loud once we started playing, it was starting to fill up more and more. I would say that the energy was good throughout our game, but I haven't really followed or paid attention to how it was before.

It was amazing to play in front of some of my friends, my fiancee, and my family. Everyone tried to come and support us because they don't really get the opportunity every day to watch us play live, so I'm happy that they're all here. They can see what CS is really about, how it is in an arena, so I'm happy that we're gonna get another opportunity to play in front of them.

I just wanted to ask about the tweet you made before the game. Did you end up finding a fix? Because in the end, it didn't look like it hampered you very much.

No, I didn't find a fix. I haven't experienced it too much, or I tried not to focus on it at all, even though I was distracted the whole day. It was very annoying yesterday, and today as well, we were trying to fix it. We came here and we tried different configs and SSDs to try to see if there's any solutions, but we couldn't find anything. The only thing that we could have done is just not focus on it and give our best, just focus on things we can control, basically. But no, no fix, hopefully before tomorrow.

You had a very good game in some new positions today. How has that adaptation been for you? It feels like you played similar positions for a very long time, like Inferno B, for example.

I would say it was a positive change so far. We went from losing a couple of games on Inferno to winning quite comfortably both times we played. Obviously, we haven't played the best teams on Inferno, but teams tried to punish-pick us and we were ready both times.

I feel comfortable, probably even more because I think Inferno has changed a little bit in how it is played. Me still trying to call from Banana was getting harder and harder, because it was harder and harder to hold Banana. Now, T's take Banana whenever they want, so it kind of took the focus away on how I want to fight Banana but also how to call around the team as well.

I would say that me playing on A will definitely give us more stability in our game, and also for Maxim [kyousuke], I feel like he's probably going to learn faster on B, where he just needs to focus on how to kill them when they come B and Banana. I feel more comfortable, and the team feels more comfortable in the way we play right now. Now, it's just about developing it and always try to improve, add new stuff to not be too predictable, but so far so good.

You will play FURIA tomorrow. They're definitely a team on the up recently, but I guess you could still consider yourself favorites tomorrow. How important is it for you guys to make the final and get as many appearances in this arena for yourself?

Our goal is probably gonna shift now. At least for myself, I said the goal is that I want to secure Stage 3, that was my primary goal, and obviously playing the arena. We have done it by doing what we did today.

FURIA is definitely the hardest team we're gonna face at this event in my opinion, so it's definitely gonna be a way bigger challenge. It's up to people to decide if we're favorites or not, but we are ready. We are a much better team than we were in Cologne, for example, where we lost to them even though we had a pretty good chance of winning there as well. It's gonna be a good game, it's gonna be exciting, and as I said, I'm happy to get another chance to play in this arena and hopefully put on a good show.