coldzera: "compLexity is a good team to study; it's hard to play against [teams] you don't know much about"

We spoke to Marcelo "⁠coldzera⁠" David about MIBR's run in the New Legends stage following their win over NIP which propelled them to the playoffs in London.

The Brazilian star talked about MIBR's hiccups against TYLOO in the first round and their 0-16 loss to Astralis on Dust2 in the fourth round, as well as about their back-and-forth match with NIP on day five.

He also shared his thoughts on Complexity as their quarter-final opponent and MIBR's confidence for the playoffs after the shaky second stage of the Major.

You've had somewhat of a shaky run throughout this stage, what are your thoughts on the two losses you had and how you've recovered?

The Major is the nicest tournament to play, so the hardest tournament to play, as well, as everyone was super prepared. Our run was pretty good at the beginning, I think we felt a little bit of pressure against TYLOO, we were winning 11-4 and they made a comeback, so... the first day was really tough for us, it was really hard, too much pressure. But on the second and third day, we showed up pretty well.

The game against Astralis... We studied them the day before we played against them, but at the same time, we tried to take so many risks, we didn't play our style, we just tried to gamble with some strats, to anti-strat. And it didn't work very well. When it was 9-0, we already lost ourselves, it was kind of hard to come back. They took a lot of good gambles, as well, to crush us on long, and that's why it was so hard. I think we didn't play our style against them and that made us play really badly.

You seemed to let the foot off the pedal today on Cache in the second portion of each half, going from 6-1 to 7-8 as CT and then from 15-8 to overtime - what happened?

In the first half, it was pretty good, we sometimes struggle on the CT side of Cache. We did a great half, 8-7 wasn't bad, we just had a bad moment when Stewie pushed door. I don't remember the round, but Stewie pushed door, he got all the information on A, and he said it was going to be B, and we had three guys on B, but we played it too separately and this round broke our economy. That was a crucial round, if we won that round, it would have been a better half for us. But, in general, the CT side was pretty good, especially because we love to play as T.

As T, the game was pretty good for us and we started committing some mistakes, especially in the splits, and the game started getting harder. When we went to overtime, we just said to go back to default, play our own game, do the splits correctly, and try to focus more on B because I saw they're not playing that well on B.

On Train, after the great half on the T side, NiP started to come back into it, and there seemed to be some confusion at some point in the 25th round, when NiP forcebought and it looked quite dangerous, what happened there? Was it a relief to win that round, after all?

On the CT side, they won the pistol and they won the first buy, so that broke us a little bit. After the sixth round as CT, we played really well, we started to build our economy.

The round against the forcebuy was a little bit chaotic for me because they did the triple-smokes on site and I didn't have too much info because a guy pushed sandwich, so when I killed this guy, I thought someone was pushing from the other side, so I swung and I flicked fast on FalleN. But the situation was really chaotic because one guy pushed and made the situation chaotic and we didn't know what was happening.

Tell me about your matchup against compLexity in the quarter-finals - what do you think about them?

compLexity is a good team, they proved they're a good team. They went 3-0, of course, so it's going to be a fun game because we always play against them in the US, the players, not the team.

They're looking good, it's going to be a good match to play on the stage. I don't know too much about them, it's a good team to study and a good team to prepare against because when you don't know much about them, it's hard to play against, so it's a team we're looking forward to studying some details.

Looking back at the first stage and the up-and-down run, how confident are you ahead of the playoffs?

We're really confident at this tournament, we practiced really well. Except for the match against Astralis, that was a tough game for us, all the matches were good to play, we learned a lot on the road.

Of course, the team is pretty new, but we already have one month, and this month, especially with Janko, he prepares really well. We're getting the confidence, it's going to be fun to play on this stage again, it's going to be fun to play the Major and show everyone what we have.

More interviews from the New Legends stage:

Day 5
NiKo: "I took the IGL role after going 0-2; most likely just for now"
woxic: "After Dust2, we understood fnatic were already tilted"

Day 4
Magisk: "Making history is always fun"
shox: "We've got three to four maps we're definitely okay with playing"
s1mple: "I don't want to be a bad guy, there is no point"
tabseN: "I feel like we can 100% win this tournament"

Day 3
NAF: "When we got to overtime I was so pissed off; I'm like 'F*** this, I'm going to buy an AWP"
dephh: "We proved we can't just play Inferno, we have other maps up our sleeves"
STYKO: "[My new role] feels like I'm going to school every day, trying to understand a new subject"

Day 2
YNk: "This game was just so hard because mousesports saved so much"
Edward: "If you feel calm during the whole game, the comeback is real, always"
nitr0: "I'm hoping we get Astralis, we can definitely put up a good show and a good fight"
Xizt: "Every loss is going to take a toll on your confidence, we had to slowly build it up again"
LEGIJA: "Before the Major, we said 'We will not practice to make Legends, we're here to f****** win'"

Day 1
Xyp9x: "Against Na`Vi and especially on Inferno, it's all mind games"
REZ: "Not playing the Minor means a lot to me, I have played so many"

Media Day
JW: "We considered twist after the early StarLadder exit; he wasn’t really interested"
jmqa: "After the last Major, our practice wasn't great, we didn't have good conditions"
flamie: "We still want to play Dust2 because no one is playing it well"
SmithZz: "We aren't completely ready at the moment, but we are getting there"
RUSH: "Hopefully, after the Major, our ranking will reflect how we actually are as a team"