skullz: "We have to bring new things to get closer to the meta"

After the game, we spoke to Felipe "skullz" Medeiros about playing against his former team, FURIA Esports ’s outside influence within their coaching staff, and what it means to play on his nation’s premium team.

A tough loss for you there against Liquid, how are you feeling straight after the game?

Right now, I'm really tired. It was an intense match and we played good CS but we lacked in the T side against Mirage. We almost brought it back on CT side but we lost some rounds we couldn't afford to lose.

What was it like to play against your former team?

It's an odd feeling. I honestly think that we're playing really good CS right now, so I'm just happy with the performances we're having right now because we're such a new team. It could have gone either way.

You had a nice interaction with NAF during the game, was it good to be on a server with him even if you were on opposing sides?

Of course, NAF is an awesome guy. He's an amazing person and a very good player so it's great to have the relationship with him that I have.

As you said, you're a new team but you're already playing well, how far away from peak level are you?

I don't know, maybe in this tournament, we can get there. It happened during the last tournament that we grew game by game, so when we review this game we could be even better.

So what do you expect to learn from this game?

We still have a lot to improve in terms of our map pool, we weren't very confident about Anubis and it really went well. We've been playing well on it in practice but FalleN had never played on it in officials, so it was a risk. It went well regardless, so we can consider it a strong map in our map pool, but we still have to work on the other ones.

What does it mean to be playing for FURIA Esports ?

I'm really proud, it's a dream of mine that came true. I think it was the right timing for me to come to FURIA Esports and we're doing a good job so far.

And to play alongside FalleN in particular, that must be special.

Of course, he's a very smart guy and he's an IGL that really cares about his players and making sure they are both performing and feeling comfortable in games. I'm really happy that I get to play with him, and honestly quite surprised too.

You weren't on the team before but one thing FURIA Esports really wanted to do was bring in outside influence and one of the ways to approach that was by bringing in innersh1ne as an assistant coach, what does he bring to the team?

He had a lot of experience in tier one with FaZe and other teams, so he's teaching us a lot. It's not just him, either, Lucid had a lot of experience with FaZe and Liquid as well which is good because a lot of our players haven't had the experiences with players and IGLs like I had in Liquid.

FURIA Esports always had a very distinct style with arT so is that something they were missing previously?

I think with arT they reached some very high peaks, but now they have a different IGL that has a different style so we have to bring new things to get closer to the meta.

You've been on two teams with an AWP IGL, from your perspective, how does that differ from having a more traditional IGL with a rifle?

It's not that different, really. FalleN gives us a lot of freedom to play and he's also a very good supportive player, when he has a rifle he entries and creates space for us so, in my opinion, it's great to play like this and have your IGL take the fights to create the space, he does it very well.