FalleN: "We postponed our break to play [here] because we want to give back to Malta"

FURIA have advanced to the grand final in the team's "second home" at the Thunderpick World Championship in Malta.

FURIA became the first team to qualify for the Thunderpick World Championship grand final after beating Aurora 2-0 in the semi-finals.

It was their third matchup against the Turks, and it was a convincing affair outside of a slow Terrorist half on Train as FURIA managed to reel in Ismailcan "⁠XANTARES⁠" Dörtkardeş, who had been a thorn in their side in their previous two encounters.

After the match, Gabriel "⁠FalleN⁠" Toledo stopped by HLTV's microphone to talk about how Aurora's game plan went wrong for XANTARES and the differences between the two potential grand final matchups against a The MongolZ team that FURIA already played once at the event and a Natus Vincere that they haven't met once with the current lineup.

The captain also shed light on FURIA's decision to say yes to the event in the first place despite a busy calendar, which will see the team go to Asia for a two-week stint at the beginning of November.

You can listen to the audio version of the interview or read the full transcript below:

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This was your third time playing against Aurora in a pretty short time, and this time it was pretty convincing compared to the last two games. What was different about today?

I think the first map was super close. Even though it was 13-11, I felt like we played good and we deserved the win, but they could have taken it because of the score.

The second map, I think because we could control the economy on the T side, we were able to get seven rounds, which is a lot, and coming with the pistol win, Mareks got three kills, a very demoralizing pistol as well, and then converting round after round. There were a lot of good rounds on the defense that they had a good chance to win, but we were capitalizing on getting a lot of multi-kills. The individuals played super well today and that's why we closed it 2-0.

The last couple of times it was an Inferno pick into a Dust2 pick and obviously neither of them worked out. Why Train this time?

Yeah, we lost the last two picks we tried against them. Today we were like, 'We're gonna pick something different.' Yeah, we're just trying to catch them off-guard in vetoes and have an upper hand on that.

They are a team who relies a lot on XANTARES to get them openings and create opportunities for them. He went missing today - was there something you guys did to try to limit him, in a way, or is it just how it happened?

I think on the defense, on the CT side of Overpass, there were many times where he was trying to duel with our AWP and molodoy was taking him out sometimes in the defaults and getting some space. It's hard for any rifle to be killing AWPers like that, so I think the plan went a little bit wrong for them. Maybe they were expecting to face Mareks [YEKINDAR] on some of those peeks from prep and all those things, but molodoy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time when he was facing XANTARES. I think it's a little bit of that.

But yeah, they are a team that can play very well, and I think they have their own struggles now to deal with. I hope they can continue strong together because it's great to have a Turkish full team representing the country on the scene.

Tomorrow in the grand final there will be two very different options for you. It's either The MongolZ, who you've faced many times in this season alone and the last two were very close at this tournament and back at FISSURE, versus a NAVI whom you haven't played at all in this lineup. What's the preference and how are the matchups going to be different depending on which one you meet?

I think it's easier in terms of preparation because I have to watch less matches if we play MongolZ, because I've been watching them for so long and we've played so many matches against each other. If we have to play MognolZ, we kinda know what's gonna happen in terms of the veto, how they play...

But doesn't that also make it harder because they know you guys as well...?

Yeah, and then it's all mind games before you have to change some stuff, you know what they know, and all those things.

When it comes to NAVI, gotta do a lot of research, check how they're playing some maps, completely new because we never really prepared for them. Even though we have some ideas about how they play, we still have to check a lot of things. A lot of work ahead of us if it's gonna be NAVI, we're gonna have to learn a lot about their game.

Date	Matches
Thunderpick World Championship 2025
19/10/2025	FURIA 17:55 Natus Vincere	Match

I wanted to ask you about playing this tournament. You weren't in a position where you had to, after you've made it up in the rankings, and usually teams will go into these kinds of tournaments to try to do that. What was the thinking to say yes to this tournament in the ramp-up to the Major?

Initially, the idea was to take a week break so that we would prepare ourselves before going to Asia for two tournaments, but then this tournament kicked in. We have been based in Malta for a long time, they have been helping us for years now, and it's a tournament in Malta, our second home.

They invited us and the organization decided it was worth playing it. We wanted to be here, so we postponed the week break, which we're gonna do from Monday, to be able to play this tournament because we like to give back to Malta after they've been helping us a lot during the last years.