MiBR headed into IEM Sydney with a blanket of doubt around their game. Having bombed out of StarSeries S7, BLAST Sao Paulo, and WESG 2018, the Brazilians were on a trajectory to be ranked just outside the top ten. Given the lineup was formed with the goal of returning to elite play, their initial showings were beyond disappointing.





In Sydney though, MiBR finally started to exhibit signs of their old high-level play. They scored two series wins over dangerous opposition in Fnatic and Mousesports, and managed to play eventual tournament winners, Team Liquid, in a close match. They walked away with a top-four placing at a reasonably stacked event, and for the first time all year, seem to be on an upwards path.





Upcomer talked to Epitácio "TACO" de Melo about his team’s performance, comparison to the SK roster, and how they structure their game.





While it was a 2:0, the series against Liquid was pretty competitive with the overtime on Nuke. Now that the team has had some time to process the loss, what do you think about it?





TACO: Yeah, playing against Liquid is really tough for this squad. Last year, even when I was playing in Liquid, I mean... They always won pretty easily against MiBR. So we know it's really hard for us to play against them, maybe our styles don't match. I don't know what happens. Definitely they are a really good team though. They have great players. They're really difficult to play anyways.





About the series though. We had a good start, then a bad start, then a good start again. Then we threw an eco round. Games like this on the big stage in semis, grand finals. It's always about the late-round, the clutch rounds. We couldn't get this done, we couldn't get a lot of clutches. We couldn't close some rounds we should've closed.





In the end, it was closer to beating Liquid than in the past. So it's progress, and we are really happy that we had the chance to close Nuke. We had the chance to maybe play the third map and maybe the grand finals.





Photo via Daniel Ránki





I did an interview with Karrigan yesterday, and he said that MiBR is the second best team in the world at clutching behind Astralis. Do you guys see this as the case as well?





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If you look back in the day, we were by far the best team in the world at winning clutches and difficult situations. We were really good at it. I think they kind of lost a bit of that when they changed the lineup and brought in the Americans. Now we are trying to recover it. We are paying attention to the clutch rounds. We have been losing a lot recently and we want to recover this part of our game because it's really important. It's even more important when it gets to the big stage.





What are the biggest differences in your identity as a team now with MiBR versus your identity with SK back in the day?





We had a really slow style back in the day, we were a really slow team. We were reading the opponent every time, nowadays though, it's really difficult to read the opponents, to play slow. They are always testing you now, always fighting for space in the map, which is really good. So now we are kind of adapting our style because the style we used to play doesn't work anymore.





It's not that it's a bad style of play, it's just that you can't play every time like this. We know we have to change, and that style is outdated now. That's something we are changing. We want to play faster, we want to take more risks, to play using the gaps. But we want to keep the slow, calm style from the past as well. So our focus is to make a mix of styles right now. That's something that we are going to work on in the next months of practice.





The opening kill percentage for you guys wasn't too good this tournament. If you're wanting to play a faster style, are you expecting more from your entries as well?





We have to use the players we have, right? Right now we have two really aggressive players in fer and felps. They are really good doing it. It's so bad if you make felps play slow. He's not going to feel comfortable and we know that. So with those guys we trust that they're going to create a lot of space playing fast and they can help us with that.





Their responsibility is to get the first kills, it’s what we expect from them.





Has your time in Liquid between MiBR and SK changed the way you play your role in this roster at all?





I think I'm the same player. I'm doing the same roles, everything, even in the SK roster before. When I joined Liquid, I just changed a few spots, like really few ones. I think I'm the same player. The only thing that changed for me is the style, I think in Liquid, we will have that mix of slow and fast more. In MiBR though, right now, I feel that we play really slow.





For me, I got used to Liquid, so I just want to rush things. That's bad for my game. So that's something that I'm improving for the next games. I think the clutch rounds as well is something I'm not doing great. I'm losing a lot of clutch rounds right now. As a support player, that's my job right? I'm supposed to win those rounds and I'm not doing really well in this sense.