‘Currently CSGO must be said to be extremely difficult’

After a 2-0 win over OpTic at ESL Studio in Burbank, HLTV spoke to FalleN and he said that “CS has a really hard time right now.”

SK started day 1 with a 3-0 record, but eventually fell to 3rd place to meet OpTic in the quarterfinals. After beating OpTic today, SK has 1 day to move to the Bay, where they will face NiP on Saturday.

In the interview, Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo talked about the preparation process as well as what to expect against OpTic today and NiP on Saturday, how CS:GO is now, and boltz’s progress on the team.

Day one was off to a great start for SK, but yesterday didn’t go so well. Astralis came back in the first game and lost to Cloud9 in the second. How does that affect today?

It sounds funny because every time we do well in the group stage, it’s like the next day it wasn’t. People don’t really mind it, but it just happens. The important thing is that we made it through the group stage, whether SK is first or third. Sometimes you’re first and you’re up against the strongest team in the other group, maybe they stumble or something. So the most important thing was to get through the group stage and we did it, so everything was OK.

Before facing OpTic, an opponent was difficult to understand because they came from many different countries and were quite unstable. How did the team plan this match?

We decided to play Overpass because it’s one of SK’s strongest maps at the moment. Everyone simply fixed some problems yesterday with Astralis. As I always say, ‘failure is the mother of success’. We lost a few spots against Astralis and that cost us T rounds. But this time against OpTic, we didn’t make any mistakes and everything went smoother.

We know OpTic can pick the map against Inferno. We thought they’d pick Train, but it ended up being Inferno – it was one of our weakest maps, although the members were definitely playable. Everyone has proven it before. With boltz joining, SK has made some adjustments and I think this map will go very well. It was a difficult map because they started winning, but in the end SK still played better.

You will face NiP in the semi-finals at Oracle Arena. Will there be any special preparation going into this match?

The plan is to win. This means we won’t go into much analysis or tactics. Everyone just needs to stay awake and determine what they want to do. It’s not that we don’t respect NiP, but I think if SK can play properly, we can beat them. It’s about us doing the right method, not stressing, not thinking too much, and just playing CS as usual.

Karrigan said that currently SK and Faze are the teams that need to be defeated (if they want to be ranked #1 in the CS:GO world). Do you agree with this opinion?

Honestly, I think there are a lot of teams that are doing well right now and CS right now is extremely difficult. It’s kind of funny because you see a lot of teams losing against teams you never knew existed, and the top teams are always trading maps with each other. If you look at CS history from past to present, there are always teams that you know you will lose if you play against them. I don’t think so now. It’s just that in the long run, SK performs a bit better than the other teams, that’s why we were able to get to the finals and win a lot of trophies. The more we play and the more maps we play, the better we can make decisions than other teams.

With the entry of boltz, SK returned to Brazil. Therefore, the team did not have enough time to practice with him. So how does the adaptation of boltz happen as SK masters more and more maps?

This went very well. The decision to bring in Boltz was well thought out and he is the player we needed. After experimenting with felps, everyone felt like they needed a completely different player. It’s not about who plays better, it’s about the positions we need and can be happy in those positions. Felps has to change the way it plays a lot, I’ve mentioned this before. It’s not easy to be another player. It is very difficult. When boltz joined, he was ready to do what SK needed. He likes to play in a position where we need him to play and he also creates new things. Boltz aim is very good and he can help SK turn the game around. He’s also a smart player, knows when to come out, knows when not to, and communicates well. SK’s ribs fer, FalleN, coldzera, TACO are already there. We prepared a lot of things, as simple as “boltz, you do this and do that.” He’s smart, once or twice he already knows almost everything.

How has Boltz evolved since the days of Luminosity?

What we didn’t like about boltz back then, despite his good shooting skills – he shot great, everyone got the Major thanks to boltz’s five seven – and has the potential to become the player he is today. Now, it’s just that he’s a bit lazy and doesn’t listen to feedback like he does now. Boltz did not intend to correct his mistakes as quickly as he does now. That’s why we decided to replace boltz. But that helped him learn from the experience of the players outside to change himself. Now, boltz is the player we’re really looking for. The perfect player can be comfortable outside the game, and very smart in the game.

Source: HLTV