FULL translation of the Aspas interview with Spike BR
I was translating the interview in the post about the SpikeBr article. But as the article didn't mention a lot of important points in the full 26 minutes video, and as my comment got too long and I wasn't able to edit it further, here is the full translation.
*Everything in a parenthesis is a translators note.
*I added a TL;DR at the end too
The full interview (in portuguese) if you want to watch it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10Ms3nvhAdE
Q1: You said that Mibr is a team that was supposed to gain multiple titles, but you guys didn't win neither kickoff, masters 1, split 1 nor masters 2. What happened in your opinion that made the team crumble like this?
A1: This is certainly a delicate moment for the team for the team as a whole and for each member individually. We have been doing everything since the start of the year to solve the problems, but unfortunately, until now we hadn't been able to understand what was wrong. We had a very serious meeting recently after not classifying to masters London to understand what was going on in the mind of everyone in the team. I know people from outside the team will want to do a witch hunt and point the finger at anyone in particular, but everyone in the team was giving their all to understand what is going. I will say this for me and I think for my team: Nobody here likes losing, or is satisfied with our performance. Nobody here goes to sleep at night without a guilty conscious. We are all frustrated.
I don't think there is a sole reason why we lost, but I think that a key aspect, in my opinion, is that we don't have a leader inside or outside the team. Having someone to put all the pieces together (I think he implies players here) and have a general read in and out of the server is a key role. If you observe all of the best winning teams, all of them have a leader. And I know that you will expect me to be this leader given my experience, and that winning champs and stuff would make me the leader, but this isn't how it works. A leader isn't the same as an igl, a person can do both, but in my opinion, you can make/mold an igl, but you have to be born a leader, this is a role I will unfortunately never be able to fill, and this is a role our team really needs right now. We can have the best players in the team, but if we don't have someone to put everything together, it won't matter.
Q2: Aspas, in the offseason, a lot was said about your influence in making this superteam, about players that wanted to play with you, and your influence in bringing these players to mibr. Do you think this pressure, especially revolving around you, has affected you inside the server?
A2: Sincerely, at the start I had thought that no. But as the months went on, I can say with 100% confidence that yes. I felt an extra pressure in this case
Q3: And when you say pressure, do you mean from outside -> inside the team, or inside-> outside?
(I didn't really understand his next answer, both grammatically and semantically, so I will just paste a word for word translation)
A3: "I think from inside->outside. The comments, that make me worry the most, if they will affect the team, so I think from inside to outside." (It isn't clear to me, if he meant that fan comments affected the team, it would then be outside->inside, so I don't know if he means another form of comment, or something else)
Q4: Speaking of outside->inside influence, we have seen many critical opinions about some individuals in the team, in particular about Tex, and also about Fr0d about team compositions, and I want to know from you, if you think this is unfair from the community?
A4: It is very complicated, as I think each one has a way to deal with outside opinions, I myself I usually just absorb the actual important ones, and usually just filter out the rest, and I do think some people go too far with this. But I think all of us have a part in the problem. I have talked a lot with Fr0d about this, I think him and I are already really used to this, so all we can do is support Tex, as he has been working really hard, and he deserves our support.
Q5: Speaking about critical opinions, and what is directly or indirectly related to Fr0d, speaking about what we have heard in the last few months, is about your agent selections, we have seen you just use a bunch of jett and raze, I want to hear from you why, if it is from you of for the team, and why does current aspas only prioritize these agents?
A5: This is a very good and delicate question, and for sure I have a big part of the guilt in this. In a general context and in some maps, jett/raze are a good choice. But here is where I say sorry to all my fans, as I do know that jett wouldn't be the best option in some maps. I ended up just accepting the comps without questioning them, and this is why I am saying sorry, as I should have been more present/assertive in making the comps. This is where I will say that this has been a hard year for me. In all other years I have always had a very strong opinion, and I always tried to argue/impose what I thought was the right path, and I wouldn't, in any world, play something that I thought wouldn't work out. But I don't think my approach in those last years was working out, and I really want to win, I am a very competitive person, and I would do anything to win.
In fact, some people have this idea that I want to always top frag. Yes, I do want to be a great player, but if we are winning, I don't care about bottom fragging. So I can say that I haven't won the last masters/champions in the last years. So I knew I had to change my mentality for this year, in and out of the server. But this clearly didn't work. There were many factors as to why. So it has been a year of a lot of learning for me. Even knowing that some comps weren't the best, even WANTING to do something different, like phoenix or neon, I decided to just do the comps that our team wanted to do. And as I said, this isn't the fault of anyone in particular, everyone thought it was the best decision, and a big part of the fault is mine, as I should have argued against this, and so I again say sorry to the fans. I also want people to know that I have always been open to play any agent, but I will always go with what the team/staff says.
(Note: He isn't blaming the team here, he does make it clear that the jett/raze comps were NOT his idea, but he says that this doesnt excuse the blame off him, as he himself should have argued against them)
I think I lost a lot of my personality this year, and that I worried to much about factors that I didn't have control over. This is something I have been talking with Brunão (the 2022 champs therapist). He has always helped me a lot with my routine. He recentely reminded me about a talk we had in a hotel during the 2023 LA champs, where during a pracc I was using one of his medical machines that looks at brainwaves, and after the practice he talked with me and showed how in this map, where he had told me to play the best way I could, he showed me that I entered a "flow state" of sorts 3 times this map (implying that he was really focused in the game), and Brunão said that usually players only enter this "state" very rarely, usually once per series. So back then I was being able to fully focus in my matches. But nowadays, because of all the stress this year, that I have been going through - as Brunão had explained - I can't enter this "flow state", as I have to be in the present, and stress blocks you from entering this state. I tried to understand where this stress was coming from, and I think I finally found out that trying to control things out of my control has caused me a lot of issues, and even unconsciously made me stressed. I think that many times I didn't agree with a composition or something we were doing, but instead of speaking up, I just let it go thorugh, and this had been distracting me a lot.
I also can’t say that the surgery I had didn’t affect me. I needed to have a second surgery to remove the tumor in April, but I spoke with my doctor and decided to postpone it because I didn’t want to disrupt the team. But I believe that was also something that was affecting me. So, in the end, there are many factors, and each one has its share of responsibility for the fact that we find ourselves in the situation we are in now. I have already apologized to my team as well, and honestly, at this moment, I just want to go back to being myself.
I think it reached a point where I was worrying even about the way I breathed and how the people around me would react to it. And this has nothing to do with outside comments. It is not the outside comments that affect me. But I was very worried about how it could affect my team, and I ended up losing myself along the way. So now, what I can say is: thank you very much to my fans and to the people who truly like me. I know it has been a very difficult time, and I really feel very frustrated about it. This year has undoubtedly been quite difficult, and that makes me very frustrated. I have tried many things throughout this year, but it has been complicated.
Also, as I haven't shown up publicly a lot, or done livestreams, I think has been hard on you the viewers, as you didn't have an answer from me, as you couldn't know what was going on.
One thing I always do, though, is that I always end up needing a moment to reflect and understand where I was going wrong. To truly understand the situation and what was happening.
And I also understand that there are many people who don’t realize that I will always prefer to breathe and take some time with things, so I can understand what is really happening, rather than react in a moment of stress and end up saying something I didn’t even mean to say. Because when you are in a stressful moment, you end up saying whatever comes to mind without thinking.
And this phase will pass, and I will do my best for us to win.
Q6: What I was going to add in relation to this, is that individually, related to all this stress and your public absence. In your opinion, do you think this the worst moment in your career, since you have started?
A6: Without a doubt, without a doubt. This has been a very hard year. This is the only one where I haven't gotten to a masters. I always classify to at least one. The statistics of our team in playoffs is 0-5, we haven't won a single playoffs game, so it has been very complicated for us. There have also been many factors as I have mentioned beforehand, and so the simple answer is that this has been a very hard year, and my worst moment yet.
Q7: So aspas, in relation to the team for us to conclude. A lot has been said about the creation of this Mibr superteam, that after these results there needs to be a roster change. What is your opinion about the team that has been created, and as you said it was a team that was supposed to win a lot of titles, and again, this hasn't happened yet, neither have you guys even gotten close to this. What is your opinion about the current lineup?
A7: To be really honest, this is not my decision, this is the decision from the coaching staff, so I don't think my opinion on this matters. Especially because, that really is just pointing fingers, when everyone has genuinely been trying their best, so I think it is really hard.
Q8: So to conclude, we now reach a decisive point in the stage, you said you didn't go to any of the masters. The path to go to champions for Mibr is now really hard, considering you need to basically not lose until the end and perhaps hope for some external results for some teams, but it is still possible. So I want to hear from you, what is key for Mibr to turn things around? To maybe classify to the (forbidden tournament) and win it and then arrive prepared for stage 2?
A8: This is something I made clear both to Mibr as an organization and to my team. I really don’t care about this short time window (between matches/stages to change their stuff). Sincerely I am tired of this narrative. I think our compositions need to change and I know that some people have this image that the people on our team were "comfortable" (semantically, he meant in the comfort zone, so not working hard), and I think it is genuinely far from that. And I really don't care about this short window, I think our compositions need to change if we want to win, and that is my view. There are a few other things we also need to change, but this is one of the main ones.
So I will leave this message for my fans, for my team, for Mibr as an organization, and especially for my wife. I apologize for the Aspas that has been shown this year. That will change. I will give my best, and I am sure my team will as well. We are making changes and trying to solve the problem.
And there is also one more thing: I know you miss me, and I know I fail a lot in that regard. And this is not new, it is not just this year. I also promise that I will do my best to show up more (publicly to the fans).
TL;DR:
- Overall, this is easily the most insightful I have seen Aspas ever. He didn't try to blame anyone, and owned up to a lot of the mistakes in the team.
- He mentioned that the teams lacks a leader. This isn't the same as an igl. He mentions that leaders are born, and that unfortunately that just isn't him, regardless of his experience.
- He mentions that the team needs to change comps, and that the jett/raze comps were NOT his idea, and that he was ALWAYS open to play with any character (he mentioned wanting to try phoenix/neon). He however makes it clear that he isn't blaming the team, as although this was the team's idea, he should have been more proactive to change the comps, so the blame also falls onto him.
- He goes a lot into the comps, but to summarize, he thinks that they need to change going forward
- He says that this year has been a lot more stressful. Partly due to stuff like his surgery - where although he said his health state was affecting him, he decided that it would be best for the team to keep going and not interrupt their schedule with the 2nd heart tumor removal surgery. But also partly due to him stressing out over things he couldn't control
- He thinks this is the worst year in his career. He changed his approach for this year, being a lot less imposing in how he plays/what the team plays, compared to previous years where he commented a lot more about the team plan/compositions. Although the team worked hard, this didn't work, and he lost his personality as the year went on
- He is sorry for the fans, and he mentions that they will try even harder for this next stage
(This took 2 hours of my time, but it was a pretty insightful interview. If you guys like it, I might translate some others from other figures in the BR scene. For example, Less had some pretty big one that honestly made me impressed with how much his composure has changed)