C9 Thanatos: “I thought NA is better than Brazil. But after facing them, they actually played better than us [C9].”

Press Conference after C9’s victory over SEN in the Americas Cup

Q: SEN used comps similar to FURIA, like Ashe-Seraphine. How’s C9 adapting to that?

Inero: Yeah, we’re definitely aware of that as a pick. It’s popped up in both series. We tried two different approaches to it, so I can’t say too much of what we’re going to do around this and what we’re thinking of it, but we got some info versus today.

We’ll be very aware of [Ashe-Seraphine] tomorrow and how we want to approach it — and what to do about it.

Q: How are you feeling in the rematch against FURIA?

Thanatos: Compared to the first day, I think we are improving a lot and we play comfortably — better than the first day. But I also think FURIA played really well. They’ve been winning [against] every NA team.

So I’m going to lock in tomorrow and then try to win.

Q: What can we expect against FURIA tomorrow?

Inero: Well, I think tomorrow we can definitely expect a much better series than our first day. I think we were a bit out of it — maybe we didn’t know exactly what to expect.

But there’s a lot more data now that we’ve seen from them. Obviously they’ve seen more of us too, [but] I feel like we’ve warmed up a bit now that we’re here and we’re playing. So a way more competitive series, I would hope. I want it to be a banger, but in our direction this time.

Q: What did this match give you to improve on?

Inero: One, just winning gives a lot of good confidence, like, “Alright, maybe we’re back. We can get out of this little slump that we’re in.” But also [we want to improve on] looking at angles and being more comfortable — not pushing so much.

I think you feel it in the series too, Thanatos, but we push a little too far, look for a little too many extra things when we shouldn’t, and make it harder [for ourselves]. We’re in control of it, so we have the ability to pull it back. But just knowing where to draw the line — I think it just [takes] experience with that.

Q: Did C9 expect the Americas Cup to be this difficult?

Thanatos: To be honest, [before the tournament], I thought NA is better than Brazil. But after facing them, they actually played better than us [C9].

I didn’t expect that it was going [to be] that hard — but I still believe we can be better than them, so I will play really hard tomorrow. 

Q: Inero, did you feel like the first series was decided by FURIA’s reads on draft priority?

Inero: I mean, I think there’s a few things that definitely played into it that weren’t great. Like our read of exactly what to do and what to pick around Ashe Seraphine wasn’t the highest.

It’s something we played back in NA in scrims, but it wasn’t super popular yet. It wasn’t a very consistent and common thing, so I felt like we didn’t care about that as much as maybe we could have.

But yeah, honestly we looked at our two games back — me and Dom went and looked at it — and [we] said, “Wow, the way we approached this is shit in comparison to what we think we might want to do now.”

Some aspects of it are good, but we think we can get much better advantages now knowing the team — and if we knew a little bit more, we could edge out a win.

Like I think today versus Sentinels, we know them really well. Game 1, that whole draft is on a sheet in our room right now that we knew [exactly] — so they’re pretty downloaded.

And versus FURIA, we can have a better shot at it now, having a bit more of an idea of what they’re actually going to do, instead of just looking at games from playoffs playing against different teams.

Header Image Credit: Riot Games