FalleN with clear message to fellow Brazilian CS-players: Learn English!
Brazilian Counter-Strike is standing at a crossroads, where the language barrier could be decisive for a lot of the players in the next generation.
The landscape of Brazilian Counter-Strike may undergo significant changes from what we're accustomed to. André Akkari, the CEO of Brazil's largest team, FURIA, recently shared his distinctive perspective on potential future successes during a livestream with prominent Brazilian streamer gAuLeS.
- Brazilian organizations, with Brazilian staff, Brazilian players, everything 100 percent Brazilian, will never win anything again. That is my opinion.
Before the start of Groups C and D at ESL Pro League Season 19, we asked Gabriel "FalleN" Toledo about the statement.
- What he is trying to say is if you look at the top 15 teams in the world right now, there are going to be a lot of international teams. That means that they have a lot bigger pool in terms of players and coaches that they can pick than you normally can’t if you only speak Portuguese. And I kind of stand by his point. If you look at the best football teams, like Manchester City and Real Madrid and all those guys, they are picking the best players from around the world to get the best players in each position. But when it comes to CS, when you speak a language like Portuguese and transition to English it is a little bit hard at first, so I don’t know if that is a transition that the team wants to do right now, the legendary two-time Major winner explained before giving his view on the future for a team like FURIA.
- When we look for FURIA in the future, five or ten years later, then it kind of makes sense, that if we want to have a different lineup where we might be able to pick players from different pools, so we can build something even better. From that regard, I stand by his point. But for the closer future with the core, we have and the language barrier and those things, we don’t think it is the right timing to do any big change like that. But we kind of see FURIA for the future go in this direction.
“Focus on your English studies”
FalleN, one of the few Brazilian players to establish a career beyond Brazilian Counter-Strike, emphasizes the importance of language skills for future Brazilian professionals. With only 1% of Brazilians fluent in English, he urges his compatriots to elevate their language proficiency.
- When I was 18 years old, when I told my mom, that I wanted to be a Counter-Strike player, and I told her I was going to join a Brazilian team, and we are going to travel abroad, the only advice she gave me was “make sure to learn another language”. That was 14 years ago.
- All the Brazilian players have to keep going to school and they have to make sure to learn another language. If Brazilian players can speak English, they are going to open themselves up to an international market. There will be so many bigger opportunities, and if you are able to live outside of Brazil, where you can make money in other currencies, you can literally change your family’s perspective and change your family’s reality just by playing a game, so yeah, definite advice to all Brazilian Counter-Strike players is to also focus on your English studies.
Gabriel "FalleN" Toledo and FURIA will have the chance to practice writing English in the chat tonight, when they face Team Liquid in the opening round of ESL Pro League Season 19.
