In the next interview we chat to tidde from fnatic

The event is over, but there is still more to come. We have some interviews lined up for you. The first one in the list is with tidde, from fnatic. fnatic went out of the tournament slightly earlier than expected. They were beaten by TCM twice on the same map, Strike, and this cost them dearly.

I went and had a chat with him to see what he had to say about the event as a whole as well as fnatic outside of Stoneleigh Park.

Welcome tidde, you've just gone out of the CoD4 tournament, how disappointed are you?

Really disappointed. I wanted a top 3, like most of the teams did. But we just couldn't handle TCM on Strike. That's not our best map, and they were really good.

You lost to them twice on it, what went wrong? Were you playing badly or were they just out playing you?

I don't know, I guess we played a little badly, but it's like I said, it's not our best map. They did a split thing, where they sent robyEE everywhere, he mainly just took us out 1 by 1. And then twist pushing B. I don't know really well. It just went wrong. Everything that could go wrong went wrong.

How was your preperation for the tournament? Did you feel on form when you came here?

Oh well I wouldn't say we were on top, but we put on a good show, kicked out SpeedLink, I am pretty happy with that, but still, like TCM. It should have been close really, it wasn't really close, like 13-8/13-7.

But you just weren't able to attack on Strike properly....

No, when we were playing in the winner bracket, we actually got pretty many rounds on the attacking side, but we lost badly on defense. Then we got back to the hotel, and we like changed some things, looking at the demos, trying to figure out what went wrong, on defense. And in the LB game we did 6-6 on defense, instead of 2-6 before we lost. Possibly better. But there is plenty to work on.

Lets talk a bit about the fnatic of a month ago. When you first came back around, and you were playing in UKeSA, no offense but you were terrible, absolutely terrible.

Oh yeah I agree, I don't know really. I wouldn't put everything on our other player, Niko. I mean I wouldn't put EVERYTHING on him. It just didn't work, the team play felt like we were playing alone, not as a team. Now we have rivve back I can go anywhere I want instead of just standing there with a sniper looking stupid. It feels like we can just play a lot more.... together.

Do you feel if you had had rivve from the start you wouldn't have been fighting to keep your UKeSA slot?

Um yeah, absolutely. Relegation would have been out of the question. We would at least have won against some of the lesser teams. I'm not sure who the lesser teams really are, that sounds really bad, but we could have put up a better fight. We let some of the teams just walk over us. Like Reason gaming. We didn't put up any sort of a fight against them. It was poor. It was like 13.... 5, 4... Well it was 13 - Less. If we had had rivve then we could have done a lot better, with him peaking and not me peaking. I have not had a lot of experience with the sniper before all these tournaments started, so....

Do you still feel you are going to be able to avoid relegation in UKeSA? I am not sure who you are going to have to play, but it could be one of Celsus, H2K or Enro Griffins.

Celsus are good. But I think we can beat them all, and hopefully remain in UKeSA for the next season.

But what about other online tournaments. When I spoke to Reason they said they had to drop out of some tournaments because they just didn't have the time to play in them all really. How are you finding the online side of things?

There is enough, of course, but I don't know how many we are in. We started kind of late, so most of the tournaments are already started, so, I don't know how many we are in at the moment. I guess it's enough.

Do you feel slightly left out from the whole EPS situation, with the way ESL are running it?. There is the EPS UK and the EPS Germany, but nothing for the Scandinavian teams.

Yeah indeed, there is nothing for us, I mean all we can do is like beat them at the official ones. I mean I wish I was from the UK, just for gaming, otherwise I hate this country. No seriously, it's like, really expensive. Yeah I do kind of feel left out. There aren't that many Swedish teams, so Sweden couldn't do that.

Do you feel that you are lucky that you, as Swedish players, are able to play in the UKeSA? We know the fnatic brand is UK based so that is how you can get in, but is it really fair? It is the UKeSA, but you are still able to play in it.

Yeah honestly, it is kind of wierd, because why does it matter if the managers are from the UK. They should just allow everyone in really. Why UK only? It is mainly UK teams. If they just allowed a few more teams to join, maybe 10 more teams, I don't know, but just to the top, it would be good.

But what about the offline tournaments? Are you guys going to be there?

Yeah we are going to try to go to TeX, it is pretty close by. It should be no problem. Hopefully we will be nicely prepared for it though. And we want to go to LAN 79, if we can get cheap flights in time that is.

I don't think anyone can disagree with the fact that dignitas are the best team at the moment. But can they be beaten?

Yeah they can. When you stay on top for so long you end up being like, yeah we don't need to practice today, we'll just skip it. In the end you find yourself losing.

What was it that brought the fnatic team back into the game. You took a break during the christmas period. But what was it that brought the game back to life again?

Probably the events, they still came through and put some money into the game. Actually having some big tournaments really helped. I mean most of the teams just thought why not. It's a fun game to play.

Do you still enjoy playing it?

Mostly it's because of the team mates. The game itself is not that fun, practicing a couple of hours a night isn't great, it's not that fun, it's only fun to play with the guys play with. Good chemistry in the team.

And is there good chemistry between you guys?

Oh yeah, it's amazing.

OK, lets move on to the QuickFire round that we have been doing with the teams.

Finally before we go, have you got any final shoutouts you would like to make?

Yeah I would like to thank all our sponsors, MSI, SteelSeries and BestPoker. Thanks!