FalleN: "Must not underestimate CLG"

casebattles2025-04-20 07:44:594

Here's an interview with Gabriel "FalleN" Toledo after yet another upset at ESL ESEA Pro League Finals.

After CLG sent fnatic down to the lower bracket, Keyd Stars followed it up with another upset against TSM, which meant we wouldn't get to see the expected grand final.

We caught up with Gabriel "⁠FalleN⁠" Toledo to get his point of view on the match, as well as the upcoming one against CLG:

How much have you prepared for this tournament and the specific match-ups in your group?
We have been preparing for this event for two months. We moved to NA and since then we were playing almost every day. For this tournament, as soon as the group was revealed, when we knew who we would meet, we have been studying some opponents.
What were your expectations going up against TSM in terms of maps? Did you have a good idea on what you wanted to play?
When you're playing against teams like TSM, fnatic, NiP, these guys don't have bad maps, and if they do, they ban it. The shaky maps they ban, so we tried to see which maps they liked the most and inferno was one of them. We tried to look into those maps, which ones we had a good chance on strategically. We managed to find two or three maps that we might have a chance on and we were really happy that they chose inferno.

Keyd join CLG in group B's first place decider

You started off well, you were up 6-2 before TSM started catching up, what do you think changed after that point? What did they do differently?
Well, we started off losing the pistol round, but then won the next round. Then boltz started picking entry frags for us, so that's why got to 6-1 at the beginning. After that, we just forgot about some basic stuff against TSM, they do push banana a lot as CT and one of these rounds we just forgot about that, we sent two guys there without talking too much about that round. They started catching up but we managed to close the half well pretty much.
There was one round that stuck in my mind was at 12-11, when cajunb was in a 1-on-2 and you had two AWPs against him and ended up dying one by one, what was the communication like throughout that situation?
I knew my friend was stuck in the bombsite and then I didn't expect cajunb to come from library. I tried peeking him first, I had a chance but I missed my shot. I was hiding and stuff and my teammate couldn't do anything, he was in a bad spot, I tried to save myself and lost the shot. I guess it was my fault, I should've waited for when he would try to kill my teammate. Sometimes it's hard, it's fast, you only have three seconds to think and you make mistakes. Thankfully, we had a lot of money after losing that round, so we bought up and won the round after.
Next up you're going to meet CLG, who don't have a good track record against you, what are you expecting from them?
I think we never lost to CLG, we beat them at Katowice and we beat them online at ESEA in Cobble two times with the same score. They're a pretty good team, they have so many talented players, we must not underestimate them, it's a hard game. When we're at a tournament like this, there are no easy maps, we will just enter the game just like we entered this one.

One of fnatic and TSM will thus eliminate the other from the tournament later on today, while Keyd Stars are set to battle CLG for the semi-finals spot.