roeJ: “We already made our goal, so there’s no pressure for us”

fnatic are now sitting on a 2-1 record in the IEM Rio Major Legends Stage, having recovered from a 2-16 loss to Heroic in the second round with a comfortable victory over ENCE in the third.

roeJ spoke to HLTV.org following the match to discuss how his team adapted from the Mirage loss to Heroic, admitting that made fnatic go another way in the veto in their third-round affair with ENCE and play Nuke instead. The 28-year-old went on to share that fnatic had already surpassed their expectations, saying the pressure is now off as they look to lock down their third victory and a spot in the playoffs.

“Making into Legends Stage, that was our expectation coming here. Now we can just show what we’ve got and just give it everything we have, and not really have that pressure on ourselves.”

“We definitely feel that right now in our games, we just play way more relaxed and not so stressed right now, and it feels really good to play.”

You can watch the interview above or read the full transcript below:

roeJ, congratulations, a second victory against ENCE. It seemed like business as usual – tell me about the victory.

Feels really good to finally get a clean win here. I think yesterday we had a really rough ending, really late at night as well, and we had some talks. We got absolutely destroyed by Heroic, so our confidence was down in a hole. We didn’t get that much sleep today, but we woke up and we just… new day, we’re still 1-1 and we have a really good opportunity. We all really embraced it and came here with a lot of energy and a lot of power, and I think we just showed that today.

I think it was good to play Nuke, as well, it’s a really good map for us, and I think the T side in general has been really bad, so just getting that T side gave us so much confidence, especially at the start of the game.

You had the choice in the veto between going to Mirage again after yesterday and Nuke, so did yesterday play a part in why you guys decided to go another way this time?

Yeah, 100%. We are way more comfortable on Nuke. We could have played it yesterday as well, but Heroic is also really comfortable on Nuke, so it’s kinda hard matchup to matchup.

But today, I don’t really think we’re that scared of ENCE’s Nuke right now. They’re kind of also in a weird spot and kind of a new team like us in some way, with two new additions, but I think we were prepared today and everyone showed up on point individually as well. We had really good mid-round calls today, and I think that’s something we missed in the other games. I think that just showed the big difference on T side today.

Tell me about what happened yesterday – 2-16 against Heroic, you didn’t have much of a chance.

I think mid-round we were playing really, really bad. I think they had some good openers on the CT side to get entries, so I think Mirage right now on the CT side, if you get entries, then it’s really, really hard to play as T cos it’s really hard to keep control of the map control and it’s easy to find the gaps as CT. Heroic really like to move around and that’s really hard for us to play against. I think we had a few opportunities in the game, but we just didn’t really capitalize and we were doing really bad decisions mid-round and calling really bad, and I think they took advantage of that really hard. If you face a team like Heroic, who is as on point as they were yesterday, then it’s gonna look like that if you don’t take the chances when you have them.

I don’t know if you saw the earlier results, but a lot of the big names are not in the 2-1 pool with you. How do you feel about that?

Obviously, it feels pretty good for us because we’re 2-1. I don’t know, I kinda just take it game by game. I think the system can be flawed in some way. I think this time around it shows what can happen if the good teams don’t really show up. But they are also expected to win the games, so… It’s good for us, right, I think one of the opponents we could be facing is BIG, which means we won’t really be facing FaZe, NAVI, or Vitality, any of the top five teams to actually go through. It feels kinda weird and I think if we make it through, it’s gonna feel a bit like we have to prove ourselves more, but we’re really hungry and just wanna play.

We already made our goal coming here, so I think there’s not really any pressure for us. I think we’re just going to take it game by game and just take what we can learn.

What was that goal?

Making into Legends Stage, that was our expectation coming here. Right after we did that, we had a talk, it was really good that we made the expectation from ourselves, and now we can just show what we’ve got and just give it everything we have, and not really have that pressure on ourselves. We definitely feel that right now in our games, we just play way more relaxed and not so stressed right now, and it feels really good to play.