During an ask-me-anything event on their team app yesterday, the Fnatic VALORANT team discussed what was going on behind the scenes leading up to their EMEA playoffs grand finals loss against Team Liquid back in May.
Reddit user u/vnNinja21 posted a screenshot of an exchange between fan @kallenph and Fnatic’s in-game leader Jake “Boaster” Howlett about what had the squad stressed out going into their grand finals match against Liquid.
“@KingBoaster in the Youtube video when you lost to Liquid during the EMEA Grandfinals, can you elaborate on what was stressing the team out?” kallenph wrote in the Fnatic app chat for the AMA. “Like, what happened the day before the match (someone, i think it was Leo, that pointed it out)?”
“We made a few mistakes leading up to the finals,” Boaster said. “Because we were so tired of Berlin and just wanted to go home, the day before the finals we decided to only vod review and not play.
In the vod review we were quite negative with our mistakes and I think it bled through to the next day affecting confidence. I’d say during the games we weren’t superrrr stressed. We were just not playing like ourselves. It’s the first game where after a loss I was able to sleep like a baby. I think that sums it up a little?”
The video kallenph referenced was Fnatic’s “Clutch or Kick Episode 3,” which documents the VALORANT squad’s path to the VCT EMEA grand finals against Liquid. In this documentary, Boaster mentioned that the team were tired and emotional after their tight victory against Liquid to make it through the upper bracket final.
The IGL was hoping to have the team dynamic settled down by the grand finals, but it seems that they weren’t quite as successful as he would have liked.
That said, he also mentioned that having a loss before Masters Tokyo might help them bounce back going into the competition. And since they took home their second trophy of the year from this event, it looks like he was right in the long run.
