We talked to Freddy "KRiMZ" Johansson after fnatic's narrow victory over NiP about their run so far, their struggles with TSM and the semi-finals against Cloud9.

After defeating Liquid in the first round of group B fnatic went on to take on TSM, but were unable to overcome the struggles with their nemesis and ended up in the lower bracket.



Cloud9 belong in the first tier according to KRiMZ

There fnatic were matched up to their long-time domestic rivals NiP, who they managed to advance over after both de_train and de_mirage went to 30 rounds. In a rare interview with Freddy "⁠KRIMZ⁠" Johansson, we talked about fnatic's run in Valencia so far and Cloud9 as their first opponent for today:

After beating Liquid you went on to lose to TSM when you were playing for the first spot in the group, you had a bad start but then you started coming back - what was the match like from your point of view? Every time we face TSM we really have troubles against them. I don't know really, we felt pretty confident going into the match and wanted to knock them out of the tournament again from the ESL ESEA Pro League. But then device and dupreeh played very good and it's hard to counter when they push everywhere with an AWP in A site. It was a hard match. What do you need to do in order to overcome this TSM scare in the future? We've been talking about flusha calling against TSM, because we think they know pronax's gamestyle when he's calling. We're gonna try it with flusha, I think. Do you think it's also a problem with that you're not as confident in duels and making plays as you are against pretty much everyone else? Are you scared playing like you usually do against TSM, is it a mindgame? Yes, of course. We have lost so many times against them that it gets in your head. It's natural that it does, but we just need to do simple stuff and get our self-confidence back and just aim.



Last time when fnatic faced Cloud9 at ESL ESEA it was a very close best-of-five

Next up you were up against NiP, what do you think going into that match seeing as you've played against them so many times as well? I really enjoy facing NiP, because it's a lot more aim-based than strats. It all depends on who gets the kills in the end, so I really enjoy playing them. Why don't you walk us through both maps, you were up 13-5 on Train and they started coming back to a point where it almost seemed like it was going their way. We were very stressed on the T side. On the CT side it was cool, because beforehand we talked about how we were gonna play. They played very good and it's Train, it's like Nuke, it's a lockdown. They usually ban Mirage against us and we were confident that if Mirage was open, we were gonna play it. We started pretty good on the T side, we were pretty stressed on that map as well, because it's NiP, it's a Swedish versus a Swedish team, always fun to play. Of course you want to win, so it was stressful, on the CT side we made some stupid mistakes like going aggro alone in mid and B house. They got a couple entries on that. The last rounds were just crazy that we got. Next up is going to be Cloud9 again after you had a close game with them at ESL ESEA Finals, what do you think about the match-up? They're definitely a tier one team now, because they've proven themselves now at LAN. They got some experience in the last couple of events. In ESL ESEA Pro League, they were very good in the final, but we weren't on our top form and we're not here either. It's gonna be a hard match. It's going to be hard if fREAKAZOiD gets his entries. Skadoodle of course, he's the main carry I'd say. pronax likes the calls against them, because seangares reads every time, he checks so many demos and it's hard to play your own casual strats against them. It's going to be a lot of mix-style strat-calling from pronax I think.

At 14:00 Natus Vincere and TSM will kick off the action on day three of FACEIT League 2015 Stage 2 Finals here in Valencia before fnatic take on Cloud9 at 17:00 .