FURIA Jojo: “I think in Game 5 we were just trying to do way too much”

After a close series with GAM Esports, which saw them play their second Silver Scrapes two days in a row, we sat down with support player FURIA Jojo, reflecting on the series and what this result means for him and the rest of the LTA South.

FURIA Jojo – happy with the result but also frustrated to not push further

Nick: We come off the 2nd banger 5 game series that you guys have had in two days, which is insane by the way. You’ve played ten really high-stakes games on stage back-to-back, with less than 24 hours between your matches. That’s got to be exhausting, considering you guys have flown out of here.

What does that take out of you to play 10 super, super high-stakes games for your tournament life so close back-to-back in this format?

Jojo: I mean, honestly, I really like the pressure, the competition. It’s tough, but we were up to play even five games tomorrow if we win today, like just how bad we want to play here and get better. So that’s it. I personally don’t really care. Of course, it’s exhausting. I would just go to the hotel, get some food, and rest for tomorrow if you want. But that’s life, I think.

Nick: For a team as young as yours, obviously, this is not the result that you wanted. You don’t want to leave MSI this soon. But when you look back on where you started this year with this roster,

How do you see the journey that you guys have gone through, and what are the important moments there that have led to you guys being stronger than I think a lot of people expected?

Jojo: I feel like I’m kind of happy with the way we got here, like how we did stuff. But I’m also kind of, you know, it’s not sad. The word. I mean, I’m blanking out, but I feel like we could do better. So it’s kind of frustrating for me because.

Nick: You feel the potential.

Jojo: Yeah, I mean, for sure we could beat G2 yesterday, we could beat GAM today. We could even go further. We were doing really well on scrims against good teams. So it’s kind of disappointing. But I feel like we lack a lot of discipline, and maybe that’s because everyone in the team is so young and we want to do like a lot of stuff that we don’t need. But we’ve got another chance soon to play again internationally on EWC, so we’ll come back stronger.

Nick: You do have EWC (Esports World Cup) coming up, you’ve got a chance to compete against a lot of these teams, plus HLE and C9.

What do you hope to work on in the time between now and EWC?

Jojo: Honestly, I think we need some days off just to rest, like everything’s fine. And then it will be kind of hard to get some scrims when we are back in Brazil because the top teams are doing a bootcamp in LA. So yeah, we don’t know how many people will be there to scrim, but we’ll get some time to rest, and then we will try to do our best just to get back in shape and do better on EWC.

Nick: You brought up a really interesting point. So there is this boot camp event that’s been planned for a while now. Riot announced it, I think at the start of this split, where the teams who didn’t make it international play from LTA Sul fly out to LA and boot camp with the teams that didn’t make it from NA. However, as you’re mentioning with EWC coming up, that makes it harder, the team that did win to get scrims for the next international event.

How do you feel about kind of the fact that, well, it’s helping the other teams in the region, it does make it actively harder for you to prep for the next event?

Jojo: I mean, I got mixed feelings because we won’t have like good teams to scrim. But also we really thought we could go like farther, so it wouldn’t be a problem for us because we will be here for a long time. So now I don’t know what to expect.

Nick: You’ve had a very wide champion pool this season. But something that the casters were commenting on is when you get to game 4/5 of Fearless Draft, and then you ban an engage support, suddenly there’s no front liners to play.

That seems to be a thing that happens in a lot of series with a lot of teams. How do you feel about that?

Jojo: Yeah, I feel like it’s kind of hard to know what’s the best thing to do on the field, especially in Game 5, since it’s very new and you can’t really practice. Everything’s different because a lot of the picks that they play here, we don’t play on practice. So Game 5 is always hard. But we have some stuff that we think is good on Game 5, like how to draft. But usually, yeah, you won’t have like melee and you have to play the game really differently because of this.

Nick: Talking about that Game 5.

What are your reflections on that game? What went wrong? And are there moments that you’re proud of at the same time?

Jojo: I think about the last game, we were just trying to do way too much. I think when we got like early leads, we should just keep this with like we just made many mistakes because we wanted to try like so hard to kill them, to pressure them. But we don’t need this chewing. But I’m really proud of how we did these last few days because this competition is really tough for us. Everyone just expected us to be really bad to get 3-0’d by everyone and go back home. But like, we showed everyone that we can compete, and that makes me really proud, yeah.

Nick: You guys, often see minor region teams will be much more reliant on their pocket picks in a lot of ways. However, and I’ll talk to Thinkcard about this, I think you guys play like some of the most straight-up standard like tier-one League of Legends. You generally play fighters, top lane mages, mid lane skirmishing junglers, engage support, and classic marksman, and you’re able to go toe to toe with G2, with GAM, with these other teams. What has it been like for you as a support like developing this play style and working with this roster? And

What do you think it is about this roster that allows you guys to play standard League of Legends against world class teams?

Jojo: I feel like we, as a team, just really want to win. We always do our best on every chance we get, like to scrim, to play in the official matches, so it’s not as hard as people think. We are so young and maybe we have a lot of problems, but it’s really easy. And we actually try a bunch of different picks on scrims. We just straight up f**k up one game and then we’re like, OK, let’s try it one more time. And then we run [it] back, then we see if it really works, and we keep growing like this. But I feel like micro, like gameplay, we are not so far from other teams, and that’s like our advantage, I think. I feel like most teams back in Brazil are bad at micro and also macro. So we are like one step ahead, 2 steps ahead of everyone totally. And I mean, that’s really nice. I just hope we continue like this and we can go to EWC, do better, and go towards all next with.

Nick: The next question has nothing to do with pro play. Have you seen Arcane?

Jojo: Yeah.

Nick: There’s another show coming at some point. They haven’t confirmed what it. If Riot came to you and was like ‘JoJo, you have to decide who the next show is about, what region, what champions’.

Where are you sending us? Who do you want to see on the big screen

Jojo: Probably Ionia, but champions, I’m not so sure. I mean, for sure I would like to see Rakan because my favourite champion, but I feel like if you go to Ionia, it should be like Ahri, Yasuo, Xayah-Rakan, those champions.

Nick: Karma. A little bit of karma.

Jojo: Maybe. Maybe. I think she’s OK, like nice, those champions, and that’s it, pretty much.

Nick: Awesome. Riot is doing these themed seasons where Summoners Rift gets a makeover, and a bunch of skins come out. If you could decide what Summoner’s Rift makeover and the theme for a season, where are you taking us? What’s the JoJo?

Jojo: I think Bando City. It should be crazy, then that should be like, really insane. And that should be really fun for everyone to see.

Nick: Yeah, awesome. Well, absolute pleasure, man. We’ll see you at EWC, and I hope to see you at Worlds.