It's been a rollercoaster: Fnatic mini speaks on the effort spent to be the best and mental heading into Masters Tokyo.

In the epic conclusion to the VCT EMEA 2023 season, Fnatic faced off with Team Liquid in an incredible rematch between two EMEA titans. Fnatic, who have yet to lose a series to this point, versus Team Liquid, an incredible roster who has been making waves in EMEA. After a gruelling four maps, Team Liquid emerged as the champions of VCT EMEA. After this loss, Strafe Esports had the opportunity to speak with Fnatic's head coach, Jacob "mini" Harris. In this exclusive one-on-one interview, he spoke about the series against Liquid, their journey and tribulations throughout the regular season, and the successes they enjoyed despite it.

 

Sorry for your loss, that was a tough loss. As a first question, I wanted to ask you what did you think about the series against Liquid? Positives and negatives? What went wrong in the series?

I think it’s really difficult to make an analysis without watching it back. My initial hunch is usually pretty right, and I think the issue is just that today, our individual form dropped a little bit. And that’s acceptable, that can happen. But the issues and mistakes that we have been making in previous games are still there, and when our individual form drops, those mistakes get exposed a bit more. I think there were many simple rounds today, that shouldn’t have been losses. The macro was just off, and the decision-making was just off in my opinion. Well, maybe not off, these mistakes have been there for a while. It’s just hard for us to take them seriously when we’re winning so hard, I guess. Well so I…Jake and I are doing our best to kind of elevate our understanding of situations. And not just peek out and try and kill everyone.

 

Speaking off, do you think that going so dominant during the regular season and not dropping a series has actually inversely your current performance? Because you guys didn’t the chance to sort of ‘lose early’ and hammer out those issues.

No…I guess what I’m trying to say is that like, I know decisions are made correctly or wrongly. Like I keep saying to the boys, if they could hear the recording of me talking during the matches. Like obviously I’m just talking to myself, kind of getting annoyed or frustrated. I think they would take my comments…they would understand the level at which a certain decision should be made. So, I think we can identify those problems. It’s just about trying to solve them and take them more seriously sometimes. The boys are doing their best, we’re working hard, and I’m really happy the boys have spent nine weeks in Berlin, and let’s be real, I’m going to be honest, it’s not somewhere the boys want to be. They want to be at home, with their families. So, I’m happy that they’re here, grinding away. I think we just need to address some of the discipline issues that happened. Or some of the game understanding, so that it’s not just random play or y’know. I think we also looked a little stressed today too, which is weird. I think maybe because we’re losing, potentially.

 

That leads into my next question actually because I was going to ask you, the Fnatic that we say today, especially Map 2 onwards, did not look like the Fnatic we’ve been seeing all season. So, just wanted to ask, was there nervousness going into the series, were there external factors sort of impacting the players as well?

Hmm, not that much. We’re really tired, so we took like the day off yesterday, rather than scrim. And I think maybe we should have done a bit more preparation for today. We were maybe too relaxed yesterday. Relaxed is the wrong word, we’re focusing on recovering because we’re all tired. I think maybe we should have prepared a little harder. Because I could tell that their [Team Liquid’s] preparation was a bit more advanced than ours today. And that isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world, because obviously it’s not the pinnacle game of our season, it would be kind of nice to win that trophy, but it doesn’t mean that much in the grand scheme of things. So I’m impressed by some of the things they were doing to try and punish us, but I think so many of those rounds- like Ascent. Ascent, I’m not too bothered by. There’s a very, very, very simple solution to that one, which is just we need to shock those trips. But Fracture and Haven especially, just lots of sloppiness I think.

 

How did you feel about Liquid’s performance today? Were they playing extremely well in your opinion?

I think to beat the players we have; you have to be pretty good you know. So, they played good, I think that their styles that they’re trying to play are good. You can tell some…they played proactive in a way that’s good. And also, their preparation on some of the maps, like Lotus for example, they were planting the spike on C in a very specific spot to not get Odin spammed. Those little details, again, fair enough they got good preparations. They won a few rounds through preparation, won a few rounds because of proactivity. But I think it would be nice to replay that match in Tokyo.

 

I also wanted to ask, how do you feel, how does the team [Fnatic] feel about having accomplished such a run to the Grand Finals? Your run through the regular season as well. How is the current mental state of the team?

Like obviously, after the only loss we’ve had this year, it’s like going to sting a bit more than usual. But in the context of the game, it’s an important game, but it’s not the finals of VCT LOCK//IN, it’s not the finals of an international event, so I think that we didn’t get the trophy today, but what we wanted to achieve this year is still ready for the taking, I guess. So, I think it’s kind of easy to brush it off a little bit but losing sucks yeah.

 

Speaking of international events, Masters Tokyo is just around the corner. How do you feel about attending the event? Are you excited? What’s the confidence level like going into this international event?

I think..hmm…confidence levels. We’re confident that we can fix some of the stuff we faced today, and it’s going to be difficult to like fix everything. Because players don’t instantly change the way they play, you know what I mean? If it was easy then, then everyone would be the best. Like we’re confident, but I think that there isn’t that much time to prepare for Tokyo now. So, it’s like, we lost that game, we need to very quickly address those issues that we’re facing. And there’s two ways we can go about it, one way is we need to plan out the macro situations better. So, the players understand decision-making in a way that is a bit more robust. Or, just have general rules on the decisions they need to be making. Because basically, we’re just not making good decisions sometimes. And we just need to fix that.

 

Speaking on the topic of international, is there any teams you’d like to face? Boaster said he’d like to face C9. Is the feeling mutual for you as well? Or do you have another team in mind?

Playing NRG would be quite fun. Because we never got to play them when they were Optic. And the way Chet and FNS kind of anti-strat, it would be kind of cool and interesting to see if they could prepare, if they could dismantle some of the ways we play. So that would be kind of fun. To just see how good that kind of style of prep is. So it’ll be kind of cool to play NRG.

 

I see! Moving on to the final question, now that we’re at the end of the season, how does it feel playing against every EMEA team? How about the journey? What were the best moments? Any regrets?

I can’t really remember to be honest; we just won every game (laughing) except for the last one. It’s been a rollercoaster because we have so many issues this year. we had Covid issues, we had illnesses, we had like visa problems. And it’s kind of been a bit of a strain on us. Like, I’m really happy we were able to perform, like win, despite having like those kind of issues. So I guess that’s the high point- still being able to perform at a high level despite a bumpy road, in my opinion. We love to practice, we love to prep, and when there’s been whole weeks where I’ve been practicing instead of one of the players, you know that, yeah… (laughing). Even “kamyk” coming in at the start as a sub, so…I’m just happy that we’re able to kind of perform. It’s also like I think a lot of the teams have been burnt out from the amount we’ve had to prepare and play. And I think we’re one of those teams who also felt that kind of tiredness, so, I think we’re just happy we get to go home now for a week and chill.

 

This marks the end of the regular season of VCT EMEA for 2023 as we now head into the international tournaments. VCT Masters: Tokyo will commence in less than two weeks. Follow Strafe Esports for the latest news on that front.

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Credits: Michal Konkol // Riot Games

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