Our sister site VPGAME sat down with Marcelo “coldzera” David at IEM Beijing following his team’s elimination.

FaZe Clan was entering the event on the back of a tournament win at BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen. The international mix earned a spot in the semifinals where they were defeated by Astralis, the eventual tournament winners

coldzera discusses his motivation, the Krieg, the teams performance, broky, and more in this exclusive interview.

You can read the transcribed interview below.

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VPGAME: You’ve done it all – you’ve been a Major champion, you’ve been the number one player in the world…so what motivates you now? What drives you to keep competing?

coldzera: I want to win so bad. Doesn’t matter if we won 2016 or 2017, the motivation is still here. I want to win the most I can and I want to be the best team in the world. It’s going to be a hard job for us, but we’re doing good. We’ve had two months with the team and we won a tournament and went to the semifinals and lost to the champions.

We’re still working hard for the next tournament and I hope people are going to see us as the top team.







VPGAME: You spent some time in Serbia and played a minor tournament with NiKo, what was it like?

coldzera: Serbia was a good country. It was really similar to Brazil, there was good food and it’s a good place to live. The time there was really nice especially because I lived really close to Janko so if I needed something he always helped me.

NiKo lived near us, like an hour and a half from us.







VPGAME: So at BLAST your team won and then here you lost to the eventual champions, Astralis. Do you think this will be a hit to the morale of the team?

coldzera: We’ve had two months with the team and I didn’t expect us to win really fast. We had a good run at BLAST and winning there boosted our confidence a little bit.

In this tournament it was kind of hard, we had some off games. Especially during the semifinals, we put too much pressure on ourselves and we didn’t play our game. They controlled all the game against us, Astralis are a good team, when they’re winning they’re a different team, they have too much confidence so they try to overpeek you, they don’t give you too much space to play.

We had an off game against them, it was 16-0, 16-2. We didn’t play our game, we played really bad yesterday. But that’s fine, we’re going to keep working hard for the next tournament and I hope that we’ll qualify for Pro League.







VPGAME: Where do you think FaZe currently sits in the CS:GO scene in terms of ranking?

coldzera: I think now we’re going to top 7, but I think right now we are around top 6. We beat good teams here, we beat EG, we just had an off game against Vitality, I feel like we should have beat Vitality in the group stage. They had an amazing game as well, we had two off maps again.

I think we’re still around top 6, we’re doing a good job with the team. Two months with the team isn’t a long time together and we need to fix some mistakes that we had in this tournament especially. We either do really good or really bad. We’re trying to find that balance and consistency.







VPGAME: Are you satisfied with the current meta?

coldzera: I’m not satisfied. I think the Krieg is kind of hard to play against. People have a lot of confidence so they repeek a lot with Krieg, they try to get more duels. Especially Nuke, for example, you can’t really overpeek outside with an AK, but people are doing a good job overpeeking with the Krieg and it’s really hard to counter. Especially when you don’t have an AWP.

I think people are playing around the Krieg a little bit and this kind of messes with the meta and gives too much confidence to the players. They’re peeking some duels that if they had the AK they should not take. I think that’s why there’s not too much consistency.

If you win the pistol or you lose the pistol and get a plant, you get a Krieg and you have a big change to win the round. When you had the AK it was harder to win the rounds. I think that’s why there’s so much inconsistency about who is going to win the tournament.







VPGAME: You’ve done some tutorial videos in the past, will you be doing that more in the future?

coldzera: I don’t work too much on my YouTube, I think I posted just two videos. How to play Cache and analyze demos. I’m trying to figure out how to work my YouTube, especially on FaZe because they’re really big on that.

I like to do content about how to play some maps and analyzing demos so I think I’ll do some more.







VPGAME: What was the thought behind bringing in broky? Do you think he has what it takes to become a top player?

coldzera: We chose broky because most of the teams these days just recycle players, they never try to bring someone new. When you bring someone new for the team and especially a young player, he brings a lot of hunger to the team.

He’s doing a good job, he has a lot of calm calls, he knows how to rotate really well, he’s a smart player, a skilled player. In general, he’s really talented and I think he just needs more experience and more time to be able to have more confidence in his game and in us as his teammates.

I think he’s gonna do a good job long term.