"Any tournament, bring it on."

Jose "SecretAgent" Fernandez's team pulled off one of the biggest upsets so far in CGS as the Mexico City Furia's Source team salvaged franchise pride by defeating Birmingham Salvo 12-6. The night before at the VIP Party he told me he'd win. I laughed him off as a deluded overconfident player, I was wrong.

Cadred caught up with him after the game for his thoughts on Salvo, Source in Mexico and much more.

Jose "SecretAgent" Fernandez was all smiles despite losing the overall franchise match. Photo; Max Silver - Cadred.org

Despite losing the overall match you defeated Birmingham Salvo 12-6 in Counter-Strike: Source, how do you feel right now?

I feel pretty amazing, I feel proud of my team. We've been boot camping for 6 weeks now, and it's really paid off.

When you went into the game having to win 14-4, how much pressure did this put you under?

Yeah, it's actually a lot of pressure, but to be honest we were just focusing on winning the round, one by one. I wasn't looking at the scoreboard and I wasn't saying to my team "we need this round". I just let them play their game and I'm really proud of them.

The map tonight was on de_inferno, was this a map that suited you?

The map suited us well, we were very prepared for it. Our Counter-Terrorist went well. I'll be honest in that I didn't expect such a good terrorist side. We could have won more rounds on CT, an 8-1 score was possible.

You had Dead or Alive 4 Female going on simultaneously next to you during the Counter-Strike: Source game, how hard was it to focus on your game?

I'll be honest, it's really loud. You can't focus as well, we lose one round on the Counter-Terrorist side that I feel we could have won, but I really couldn't hear anything, and they ended up catching me off guard.

Before the game no-one predicted you to win, it was all about damage limitation for you, how does it feel to go out and prove everyone wrong, that you can hang with the best?

It feels great, we all knew that everyone was talking about it, "Furia is going to get smashed", we really wanted to prove that we are a good team. The match against Rio was an awful game for us, three of our players were new to the whole stage experience, and it really showed. They got over it tonight and they had fun.

What will your team be doing to practice between now and the next season?

We'll be playing in CEVO-P, we're a team located very near to the United States border, so we ping well to Texas and California. We're going to play in it and use it to improve. We need more experience, we need to attend more tournaments and we need to practice against the good teams, American teams. We need to do that because the standard in Mexico outside our team is practically non existent.

Do you want to keep this roster for next season?

Yes.

Do you think we'll ever see you at a European LAN?

I would love to go to Europe. I don't know about source events but I would love it. [GM NoobZaiBot mentions I34] I34 would be great, any tournament bring it on, we want experience.

Right now what is holding your team back?

There's no good teams in Mexico to play against, they don't have the drive that this team has, we want to just get better.

Do you think Salvo under-estimated you?

I think so yeah, before the match I was telling my team, "I don't know why there's so much hype over Salvo". They're a good team but I think the hype on them is huge, I don't think they're that good, they're good but not crazy good. They under-estimated us a lot and that affected them.

When you think of eSports Mexico isn't a country that springs to mind, can you put Mexico "on the map"?

[Laughs] Yea.

In practice which teams have impressed you the most?

I think Venom, they're a really good team with great individual skill, them and OPTX.

Which franchise do you think will go on to win the World Finals?

I'm going to say it's between Salvo and OPTX, either of them.

In the Latin-America finals Rio Sinistro beat you in Source. They're a team that keeps on going back and forth between Counter-Strike 1.6 and Counter-Strike: Source, do you think they need to stick with the game to be the best?

That is a problem, if they want to play here and win they need to play source dedicated 100%. Give them time and they'll be better, KIKOOO and fnx have only just moved to source, they'll improve loads.

You yourself came from a Counter-Strike 1.6 background, what do you think of Source?

I like source, it's different, faster. It brings new things, change is always good.

If it wasn't for CGS using source would you be playing the game?

I would be playing 1.6 if CGS was not here.

I know you really want to say this so tell me about your de_nuke skills.

de_nuke is outrageous for us, simply beautiful, I was hoping we would play it tonight. We could easily have beaten Salvo 16-2/15-3, I'm going crazy here.

Thanks for your time, good luck next season.