FNATIC’s Game Plan For The Europe RMR, MATYS talks
Some fans are not expecting much from FNATIC since they signed Tim "nawwk" Jonasso less than two months before the tournament in order to replace Aurélien "afro" Drapier. Given that it takes time for chemistry to build up and rosters to adjust, FNATIC have struggled to show great results since the signing. However, in an interview with HLTV, Matúš "MATYS" Šimko said that he doesn’t want to make any excuses.
When asked about the 1-1 result at the end of the day and how beating NAVI could’ve made it a flawless 2-0, MATTYS said
It could have been worse, but it could have been better. I think against NAVI, we lost twice. We won both pistols and we lost both second-round forcebuys. In a BO1, that's going to hurt you. We also lost all the breaking rounds with money. If we won one of the breaking rounds with the money against them, then the game would be positive. But they are number one for a reason, so they also played very well.
When you face top ten teams, it doesn't matter if it's top one, top two, or top five, you always want to have some prep. You always want to know why they are where they are, you know. So we always want to see what they do, what they do better than the other teams. Always helps, for sure.
When asked about their win against Rebels and how they were the favorites that game, MATTYS said
It helped us a lot that we played our game. They let us play our game, usually that's going to help us a lot, especially on a map like Ancient. That was why we managed to win the game that early. The steps we want to do or want to achieve in the game are going to go well for us because we have very strong individuals, and that's what we sometimes lean on, and a little bit of teamwork in the game.
Maybe not now, we were still a little bit stressed for the first match against NAVI, which I think makes complete sense. Sometimes the first games are a little bit rough, but we already helped each other in the second game. It was very easy to see that we are playing better and better each game, and that's what we want to show in the following matches.
When asked about nawwk and whether or not FNATIC has had enough time to prepare with a new player, MATTYS said
From a certain point of view, yes. Now it's in our hands. I don't think now we can use that excuse, to be honest, we had to put in a lot of work to make it work, and I think we did a really good job so far. It's up to us to prove it now.
Sometimes it's rough to adapt because everyone in the team has opinions on how to play the game. We had a little bit of a struggle in the beginning because of that, we tried to connect in the game and make everyone comfortable, that was the biggest problem at the start. But we did an amazing job on this, every one of us, it required huge resilience from every one of us since everyone wants to do something on the map sometimes.
When asked about FNATIC’s chances of qualifying the Major and how much it means to him personally, MATTYS said
It depends on who we're going to get because so far I have no idea who we're going to get in the next match. But for me, the most important thing is that we've shown we can play our own game in the second match against Rebels, and I'm very happy because of that. We also showed a little bit of our weaknesses, that's for sure, but overall, I'm really happy that we managed to show that we can play against every single one of the teams here.
I want to do everything in my hands to qualify for the Major. Last time it was rough, we needed just one win, I think we were 2-1 up last RMR but we lost all of the games after. I want to do everything possible to qualify.
Towards the end, he was reminded that in just 10 days, he’ll have been with FNATIC for a whole year, to which MATYS reflected
To be honest, this one year in fnatic was so fast that I blink, and it feels like it was two or three months ago. It went that fast for me. That's why sometimes it's hard to live in the moment because everything is going so fast. So that's why I now understand that it's time to show myself and show how I want to play the game. As a unit, we want to qualify for the Major, that's for sure the goal.
