Rotterdam against the wall

Do you consider the 9th spot fnatic is on at the moment a failure?

- Yes I do.

Where, in terms of player material, skill-wise and organization, should you be placed instead? Is fnatic a Top 4 WC3L team?

- Well, Top 4 is the aim, but it's hard to say you should be a top 4 team with kids who still go to school and follow educations while there are at least 4 teams full of progamers who live of this game, yet you should at least be close to it and fight for the spot, not end up as top second last... An organization as fnatic should indeed, be part of the best teams in the world in every game they are involved in, so also wc3. Even though it's really hard to be the best, and there are teams who clearly got better players than we do, we should aim to make the gap smaller and keep improving, something we failed at in this season.

Wherein lie the issues that caused this failure?

- Well you can start by blaming other things but of course you should start with yourself. There was a lack of professional attitude this season, with players not showing up for a lot of clanwars, think we had at least 5 forfeits, that's ridiculous for a "professional" team, but besides that, we had some bad luck also. The unexpected departure of elfi, followed by the even more unexpected exit of Naniwa, which left us without a Undead, then Just disbanded while we 5-0'ed there real line-up, which just killed motivation, even though we tried to keep the spirit up, somewhere we didn't.

With a Counter-Strike team so popular, there is quite a lot of pressure and expectations on the WarCraft team as well. Do you feel that people expect too much out of your team?

- Hm, nah don't think it's like that, even though you get compared yeah, since our CS team is arguable the best team in the world, while we are clearly not, but there's a big difference in scenes, and fnatic also knew we weren't the best of the world, so can't expect us to win WC3L when CS wins CPL; but besides that it's what I said before, we should aim to come closer and improve, this season was more the opposite, which is a very bad thing and we have to think about how to move on.

What do you feel that you, as the team-captain, should do to get the team back on its feet and be fighting for the top spots?

- We will talk together but besides that I don't really know it now... I don't feel more special than the others or as a leader or anything, Elroy is the manager and we are just players, and we all have the same rights so it's not really up to me, more of a team thing.

But how come you are set as the "team-captain" at the WC3L? Just a meaningless title?

- Haha, not really meaningless but nothing big either. Since I'm in fnatic for a really long time I got close contact with the management of fnatic, more than other players so in that case they talk more with me and on a certain moment, it was just so that they made me the captain ;p which sounds funny but in the team I'm equal to the rest.

What do you rate fnatic's changes of making it through the playdowns?

- I'm not really thinking about it to be honest, it doesn't mean too much. If we lose we can have a nice warm-up in the qualifier :), if we win we got holidays ^^. I believe we are able to beat any team in the world, if the mood is right and we get lucky, so we will see how it goes.

Has your gaming month in China improved you in any way?

- Yeah I think it did, even though it got a bit overrated, I just went to china for 3 weeks and participate in 2 tournaments, and meanwhile practiced there instead of here, but it's not like I would drastically improved in those weeks, even though it was a lot of fun playing those tournaments and practicing with players I would never play with, normally.

So doing a "ToD & SaSe" by moving to China for a longer period is nothing that interests you?

- Hmmm, I think I would have a great time and it would be nice to see if I can actually become a real top player, if I went for it that way, but I still got school which is hard to just postpone for a while or stop for good... but I was thinking of staying in China and meanwhile study a bit, but yet go there for gaming. Thats an option that certainly got my interest, and I will think about it, but that's nothing that will happen tomorrow or next week, but who knows in the future.

Looking at your team's player statistics in WC3L, Satiini is the best one for sure, with +15, while the rest of you are either on 0 or on minus. Would you say Satiini is the player who lifts up fnatic from being an even more bottom team, so to say?'

- This season yes, but I wouldn't really say so in general. I do agree he's the best player of this team, cause he actually is world class; what the rest should be, but Xyligan's skill is nearly nothing less and he showed it on LAN several times, online is a different story though. For others it just went so so, but I truly believe that every player can perform better than they did this season.

Lastly, would you say this was the toughest WC3L season to play in as of yet?

- They say so every season, but this time I would agree yes, the season was really close, where even the last team had a statistically chance to reach the playoffs at the last playday, which is something new of course and made the league very interesting.

Any last words before we put this baby in the bag?

- Yes I wanna thank all the people that supported fnatic throughout the season, in good and in bad times. Besides that, last week I released a replay package for the people in #orcbrothers @ quakenet with my replays of GGL (vs Moon, Longwalk, Check, Winners), KODE5 UK versus DeMusliM and 20 ladder replays. I guess some orc fans out there might be interested in that. And as last I hope we can play a decent NGL season atleast, after the very average start so far, Cheers.