Krabeni on "frustrating" magic match: "It was hard to control emotions for everyone"

FUT's in-game leader is hoping that more playoff exposure will help reduce the team's nerves in later stages at events.

Emotions ran high in the FUT camp after their loss to magic on Ancient in the Esports World Cup's Round of 16, as they gave up many advantageous situations in the map loss, and even in the maps they later won to secure the series.

"We lost one, okay, the next one again 2v1, next one, 4v1, next one, 3v1," Aulon "⁠Krabeni⁠" Fazlija told about the frustrations mounting during the match. "It was hard to control emotions for everyone."

Krabeni and his teammates came out on top in the end, however, and secured their map pick of Anubis before locking down the series on Mirage to reach the quarter-finals in Paris, where they are now slated to rematch MOUZ , a team they beat in the group stage, on Friday at 13:00 .

magic has been surprising a lot of people for the past few months. Can you tell me about the game and what makes them difficult to face?

Yeah, they have a play style that we didn't face yet, and it's the first time that we play against them. To be honest, in the first map they were just running over us. We were not playing active in the map. We were letting them play their game, and we were so slow in reacting, and that caused us to lose the first map

And also, overall I've never been more frustrated because of losing like 10 clutches or something, which was hurting. But in the end it was good that we managed to win it.

How was the atmosphere? On Anubis there were a couple of very stressful situations, I'm sure. There was the 4v2 that you guys threw away, and then a couple of clutches that ended up going the other way. It could've gone wrong for the series.

Yeah, I was just saying, 'blyat, again we lose.' (laughs) No, but we were just a bit, this voice which is a tilting voice, in general. Overall, it was normal I would say, because we lost one, okay, the next one again 2v1, next one, 4v1, next one, 3v1. It was hard to control emotions for everyone. But we had a good talk after the first map, also between the maps, where we were still losing clutches.

Do you still put these struggles under pressure down to how young the lineup is across the board? That's something that you were talking about earlier in the year, not having as much experience dealing with some of these moments on stage, and some of these playoffs matches that you haven't played that many of. Is that something that you're still struggling with, dealing with that pressure?

Yes. In playoffs, this is our second playoff overall, from the last season where we started to play in good events. And whenever we have the game where we need to go to the playoffs or the game where we start to play in playoffs, we start to have pressure from the first map. After we speak about it, then it's going... we are not having that much. But yeah, this pressure is a big problem, and I hope for the next games, overall my players and also me will have less, and we can manage to start the game good.

Yeah, speaking about the next game, if MOUZ end up winning, that would be your third match against them since the Major.

Yeah.

And you won the last two, one here at this tournament, which was admittedly very close. You've found a lot of success against them. Can you tell me about the matchup and why you think it's been successful for you?

Against them, it's always a pretty close game, but every time we are starting the game, like, 7-0, 8-1, something like this, and I don't know, somehow against them, I also say to my teammates, it's meant to be that always the game against them will end 13-11 or in overtime. We're winning, like, 10-2 in some maps, and somehow we will go in overtime and maybe we win. But yeah, we like to play against them, and for us it's more, we prefer to play against them, yeah.

I wanted to ask you about your results. Before the xfl0ud addition you were struggling with results leading up to the late part of the season. Do you see this as a turning point for you guys? Now that you're top eight at the Esports World Cup 2026 and potentially even going further, do you see an improvement in form in the team, and what do you think has been improved since the addition?

What has improved, I think, is the communication has been better, and overall... also for xfl0ud it is a bit hard at the moment because he's playing some positions which he never played on CT side. On T I think he's fine, but on CT mostly I'm playing that position that he was playing, and he is just taking lauNX's role and he's playing his position.

But this EWC playoff, now we are in top eight. I think it's good for us. I hope we will maybe win some more games so that for next event we'll be more confident going into playoffs. And overall for the other events we are always struggling. We have the game to make to playoffs and we cannot do this. We're cursed. I don't know. So I hope this gives us confidence and to go all the way.

Can you tell me about xfl0ud a little bit more, and what differences do you see between him and lauNX and how you're utilizing him in the game?

He's speaking more for sure in the mid-rounds than lauNX. But overall, it's not a very big difference. Of course, not in shooting or stuff like this, but in positions and stuff like this he's, doing his job pretty well and we are happy with him. And yeah, he's bringing good ideas, it's good for us.