After strong performances since the addition of Mareks “YEKINDAR” Galinskis and Daniel “molodoy” Golubenko, FURIA have won their first ever tier one Counter-Strike tournament at FISSURE Playground 2, beating The MongolZ 3-2 in the grand final.

Ahead of the tournament kick starting, we caught up with their star man Kaike “KSCERATO” Cerato to discuss the future of Brazilian CS as teams continue to follow in FURIA’s footsteps and recruit from overseas.

Seizing opportunities

Prior to the signings of YEKINDAR and molodoy, FURIA were lying dormant. Long past stagnant, they were incapable of putting together a lineup that had either the role balance or firepower in order for them to truly challenge the top teams. But they all changed as their Eastern Europeans arrived.

“It’s about seizing opportunities. If you are given one, you have to f**king take it,” KSCERATO told Esports.net, “We signed molodoy because he was owning us in practice.”

A decision that confused almost everyone when it was first announced, it ushered in a new era for Brazilian teams. And the reward for branching out was instant as FURIA reached the playoffs of the BLAST.tv Austin Major. Even better still, they were joined by paiN Gaming, who themselves had moved away from Brazil with the signings of Franco “dgt” Garcia, a Uruguayan, and David “dav1deuS” Tapia Maldonado, a Chilean.

It’s an opportunity that teams have seized before. MIBR was once home to NA players Tarik “tarik” Celik and Jake “Stewie2k” Yip, Imperial’s AWPer is Argentinean, and in more recent times, as MIBR look both at their own past and at the same future FURIA sees, they’ve signed Aleksi “Qikert” Golubev and Klimenti “kl1m” Krivosheev, two Eastern Europeans.

“I don’t think it will be the future for a long time, but it will be for now,” KSCERATO said. “The Brazilian scene is pretty good, VRS made it a little hard, but there are a lot of good players.”

Success brings understanding

The current form of FURIA passes the eye test in every way. They play a good brand of CS with a strong balance between aggression and passivity. KSCERATO thinks it’s the best version of the lineup he’s been a part of, which says a lot considering he’s called the organisation home since 2018.

“We’re playing really well,” he added. “Going international changed a lot of things. How we see the game, how we communicate during it, I’m liking it.”

With such passionate fans, though, before the upturn in form, it may have been hard for them to accept a departure from the scene they feel so much national pride over, but that wasn’t something KSCERATO was ever concerned about.

“They understand it, FalleN played for Liquid before and they understood it then, and we had junior back in 2021. They’re used to it. They just want to cheer for Brazilians, and it doesn’t matter who else is on our team because we’re Brazilian organizations still.”