Europe ended Rift Rivals in succinct fashion, only dropping one game on the final day before handing North America yet another international loss. For the majority of the tournament, it seemed like NA teams couldn’t stand up to their European counterparts, with Team Liquid as the lone exception.





Following the conclusion of the best of five match between the two regions, we caught up with Origen’s support player Alfonso "Mithy" Aguirre Rodríguez. Having played in both NA and Europe recently, Mithy was able to provide some insight as to why the gap between NA and EU is so large, as well as his general takeaways from the event.





What’s it like being back in NA and playing on this stage again?





Mithy: It feels nice to play with my team. It feels like I’ve gone a few steps forward in terms of my own gameplay. Mostly just like the way our team operates; it feels like we’re much better than NA, which is pretty fulfilling for me to know that I had it in me.





Our macro is much better, so it’s nice to see. It didn’t click on TSM, and now in this team it just feels like what I see is how the game is supposed to be played and how everyone in this team sees how the game is supposed to be played. It’s working out and we’re getting better much faster. It’s just really easy and more dynamic. It feels good.





So comparing then your time right now with Origen and your time with TSM, what do you think are the main causes of that difference in how things are clicking for you guys?





We just had a lot of problems playing macro. A lot of stupid mistakes, everything had to be talked about instead of everyone understanding the game by themselves and then uniting each others’ brains to work as a unit. It had to be like, everything had to be called for and the game was much less dynamic.





I feel like the junglers I played with were pretty inexperienced. Not to blame them or anything, not saying anything bad about them, but it just feels easier for me to work with a jungler that has the experience that [Origen jungler Jonas "Kold" Andersen] has, or [Kim "Trick" Gang-yun] had, or [Maurice "Amazing" Stückenschneider] had back in the day. It was pretty shocking for me.





In your opinion, is that a problem NA teams in general have when compared to EU teams?





I’m not really sure, but it is true that it’s always [Team Liquid jungler Jake Kevin "Xmithie" Puchero] winning. People say, “Oh, Doublelift!” and this and that, but I just feel like Xmithie is the only really good jungler in NA. Even then he’s not even that good. He’s just really smart I feel like.





I’m not really sure. I’m just surprised that other people don’t learn from him. I feel like everyone in NA is pushing each other, but in NA people don’t learn enough about Xmithie.





It seems in EU we have a wide variety of picks and role swaps, but in NA we see the same drafts every game and very little innovation. Why do you think EU has so much more creativity and so much more diversity?

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I guess we have more space, and we also play less scrims. Our solo queue is better too. We have like three times the amount of people playing. We’re just more open-minded and willing to try new things and trust each other that things work out. I’m not entirely sure why it is. I feel like it’s just a structure difference.





That’s interesting to me, that you guys play fewer scrims but you’re able to have so much more diversity. Why is that?





For example, when I was on TSM, we played three blocks. We always played similar stuff and it was less test stuff. When things were tested, it was like, “Okay, this didn’t work, so let’s not play it again,” whereas in Europe, it’s like, if this didn’t work then everyone goes to the PC and it’s like, “Well, this didn’t work because you’re fucking bad. Maybe if you play a bit better we can try it again.” Even the person that plays it, he’s like, “Well guys, I’m just really bad at this. Just give me a week and I can try again.” It’s more open to being critical about things and just pushing each other to be better. That’s one of the things.





We play solo queue so we can try stuff then try it in scrims. It’s mostly the way we do reviews, we just talk things out instead of going into really specific things about the review. We just try to expand the game and try to figure out the general concepts of the game and then have everyone try to understand those so we can build on them.





Here, it’s like, “Well, we did this. We should have done this. We did this and this was wrong.” Generally what we should be looking to do is to pressure the map in this specific way, regardless of which game we’re playing, if it’s this one or two games in the future.





For you then, what are the main differences between NA and EU?





I think there’s many things, to be honest. Everything generally is just worse, but the one thing I noticed a lot is that it feels like a lot of players in NA play to look good rather than playing to win. It’s more important that you look good so that you don’t lose your job than that you win, whereas in Europe it’s all about winning and doing everything you can to win, pushing yourself in every way to get there, regardless of if you’re inting or not. That’s just the nature of the process of learning.





Some players have said they feel like in high elo NA solo queue, players are looking to become streamers rather than go pro . Do you think that mentality affects why players are trying not to lose rather than win?





That’s also it. The solo queue is just horrible. There’s much less players, and like you said half the players are trying to be streamers and they’re not FF’ing lost games and not trying to push themselves. Instead they’re just playing to chill out, whereas in Europe, the people are competitive. If someone is playing to chill out, he’s going to get flamed to the ground. Someone is going to run it down in his game and he gets out of that Challenger elo because we know we want to play to improve and get better. I feel it’s just more of an alpha ladder than in NA.





So after all of your experience in NA and playing in Rift Rivals, is NA just that far behind EU?





No, I mean I think TL is good. Their players are good, their macro is pretty good, and generally they have an idea of how they want to play the game. They execute well through it, and I feel like their decision-making is not bad. They definitely have good games and can take a game off anyone.





Generally the feeling we got from especially C9 and TSM was that their macro was bad and their mechanics were bad too. They were just not really good at anything compared to EU teams, like their champion pool diversity and macro and mechanics. I’m not really sure since C9 was playing with a sub and I feel like TSM’s junglers really underperformed against Europe, so it’s hard to judge. At the end of the day every game is jungle difference.