coldzera: "We are going to change the IGL; I'll take the role"

We managed to sit down with Marcelo "coldzera" David after SK's disappointing exit from IEM Sydney 2018, with the Brazilian revealing that he would be taking on the in-game leading duties.

SK had a rough 2018 so far, with a plethora of underwhelming results since the turn of the year, their most recent one being a group stage elimination from IEM Sydney at the hands of TYLOO and Grayhound, two massive underdogs.

The communication is still the biggest issue for SK

Marcelo "⁠coldzera⁠" David talked to us in an exit interview, opening up on the difficulties the team has been having adapting to a new player and communicating in English, and announced a change in the leadership.

You had a few days off, thinking about the result and what happened, so what is your current state of mind?

Of course, we are having a bad period. Last year we won everything and this year we didn't win anything, so we made a change inside the team, we brought in Stewie2k, we changed the communication. Now I think we are starting to improve as a team, that the change is for better. I think Stewie is a great player, he plays really well, but we are a little bit lost inside the team.

However, it's not Stewie's fault, I think it's our fault right now. We are playing so fast, we are trying to play a different style and that different style makes us a little bit lost sometimes. As a team, I think we started growing, but we need a long time to create more teamplay, create more new things and try to have good chemistry. We will see.

You mentioned that you are playing faster now, how did it come to that, the decision to play faster? Is that something that happened naturally or is it to accommodate some players?

Yeah, when we brought in Stewie, he is more of an aggressive player, so he likes to play faster. I think that change in the game style is because of him, we discussed it in practice and we saw that we need to use Stewie in different roles and change some stuff inside the game. One thing we changed was to play some games fast.

But I think, for us, this tournament was bad, since we were leading at every half time, so we had a lot of good halfs, a lot of good moments, but after swapping sides we were a little bit lost sometimes. I think it's because we are losing so much, with that we are losing our confidence and because FalleN, when he is calling and we start losing, he loses a bit of his own confidence. We are trying to get his confidence back.

As you mentioned, you are now communicating in English, so how big of a difference is that, actually, for you guys? Does it the information flow slower than usual, especially when you are playing fast-paced?

For us, now, talking in English is kind of hard. Sometimes, in some moments, when we need to communicate really fast, our minds simply blow up. I think we just need to talk more and try to improve more on it. Me and boltz for example, we don't have good English, so when we try to communicate in English fast we just blow up.

I think we should try to play more and talk more in English and we will be better at it. We started having English classes as well, to make the communication better.

You lost here to TyLoo and Grayhound. It seems like a very bad result, but on the other hand, they had good results after that as well. They beat Cloud9, played well against FaZe, depending on which team we are talking about. So did they also bring something to the table in those matches to earn the win? What did they do so well that they could beat you?

Against Tyloo, it's hard to say if they played good or not, I think it's more about us. We were winning the game 12-6 and we lost an eco, they didn't have kevlar, just pistols, and we lost a full eco. That was a crucial round for us, and after that, they won a good situation and broke our economy. When we brought the game back to us, we had 15-14, I knew that they didn't have good weapons, but we tried to play so safely, we didn't try to capitalize against them. I think TyLoo played really well, but it was our fault, not that much them playing well.

Grayhound impressed me a lot, they played good CS, beautiful CS, they know how to do the fundamentals really good. We played Mirage and Overpass, Overpass for us is a hard map, we tried to fix some problems that we had, we don't have good defaults right now, we are all kind of lost on the map. That's why we were practicing it this week a lot. And on Mirage we did the same thing against them, we started winning 10-5, and after that we lost a crucial round, because of communication again. I think the reason we are losing to these teams is that we make a lot of mistakes, so we make the game harder than it is normally, than it should be.

FalleN will be passing on the captainship to coldzera

Watching you play those games, it didn't seem like you weren't losing confidence, it seemed like you were calm, no one was getting tilted, does it feel like that way as well, does everything feel under control?

Yeah, we practiced really good for this tournament, but it's still hard when you start losing a lot of rounds, as T for example, if you lose a lot of rounds in a row, you start doubting your strats. Our defaults are not working anymore, we call some bad strats at the wrong times, the other team can then read us very well. I think for us it's not that we are losing confidence in our skill or communication, but losing confidence as a team, in the team play, in the strat, calls. We are losing that confidence.

The last two events were obviously not that good for you individually as well. There is that connection that people at least talk about, between you and TACO, he was the guy that was making some space. Do you feel like that is missing in your individual game now?

No, I don't think so. I think we played badly as a team. Of course, when I played with TACO, he created space for me, but I think we also create space now, but the problem is that we are kind of lost in endings of the rounds. We cannot close the rounds really good because of the communication. Sometimes we try to do something fast when we have a gap and we can't do it because the communication is bad at the time. Of course, TACO is a great player, but if I put it on a scale, Stewie and TACO, Stewie is 100% better than TACO. And if he is 100% better than TACO then I should play 100% better as well.

It's hard with communication and some stupid calls we do every time. But I think we are growing up as a team. This tournament I played not so good, normal, but we need to improve more as a team and improve our communication. I think, for us, the tournament was not that bad, we lost to ourselves again, when we had the game in our hands. We were winning the first halves and let it go.

You had a tough series of events, WESG, Marseille and  now this. So how do you get out of this kind of rut, how do you turn it around? 

We had talks inside of the team now and we are going to change the in-game leader, I will be the captain right now. The decision was made because FalleN wants to focus more on his game and because he is feeling that everyone can read him. That is what he was telling us this year, that people can read him too much.

So right now he wants to change the captain, I'll take the role, I'll give more calls inside the game. I agree that we should try the change as well, when you play two years in the row, winning everything, people watch your demos, they see how you are playing. Before they copy it, they also try to understand how your system works. I think that the change will be good.

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