During the tl;dr interview at BLAST Open Porto, Falcons player TeSeS discussed the team's current form, their recent loss to MOUZ, the upcoming match against G2, and the changes the team has undergone since winning the Cologne Major.
Q：How do you feel currently? How is the overall condition of the team?
TeSeS: Overall, it's quite good. Of course, losing to MOUZ is still a bit disappointing, as it felt like we hardly had any chances in that match.
But now we're here and ready for the knockout matches, hoping to put in a very good performance.
Q: I was originally planning to talk about MOUZ a bit later, but since you mentioned it, let's just talk about it now. Your most recent loss was against MOUZ, and that was a match that affected the seedings for the elimination round. How do you view these kind of "seedings matches"?
TeSeS: I think there's no issue. The seed ranking matches have always been part of the tournament, and there's nothing special to say about it.
If we use "this match wasn't that important" as an excuse, I think that’s pretty foolish. We did treat it as an important match, but they simply outplayed us in the last two maps. So all we can do is give them credit.
Q: Next up, you'll face G2 in the quarterfinals. Their recent form has been inconsistent, but that certainly doesn't mean the match will be easy, especially since they now have a new AWPer. Will this affect the matchup between the two teams? Will your preparation be any different?
TeSeS：No, our preparation method remains the same.
But they are a new team with a new sniper after all, and the sniper is one of the most crucial positions on the team. From the looks of it, he's getting more integrated into the team with every match, so facing him should be interesting.
Q: You had previously won the Cologne Major. At that time, many might have thought Falcons would become the next dominant team in CS, but after that, you still lost some matches. Do you think this was because the pressure lessened after winning the championship and you relaxed a bit, or were there other reasons?
TeSeS：It's hard to say. I don't think we've slacked off, but we did fail to seize crucial moments in some matches, and that's what we're working on now.
I feel like we've just gone through a honeymoon period and are now entering a phase of adjustment. We need to rediscover ourselves and also figure out what kind of match intensity we should maintain on different maps.
Sometimes a team just needs to go through a little struggle period before they can truly come out of it. We're hoping that will be the case for us right now.
Q: Do you think recent match losses are also related to Ancient? So far, whenever you choose your own maps, you pick Ancient in every series but haven't won a single game on it. Are you just trying to continue improving this map through official tournaments, or have the results simply not gone your way?
TeSeS：Yes, we were actually a bit surprised ourselves to lose three consecutive games on Ancient, since we've always performed really well on this map in practice.
So, before coming to this tournament, we were actually very confident about picking Ancient as our map choice. However, it now appears that this is indeed a problem we need to re-examine and analyze.