yuurih: "Our T-side is not good."

FURIA spent the second half of last year on top of the Counter-Strike world. Now, in 2026, they’re struggling to find that same form again. Will BLAST Open Rotterdam be the catalyst for their second wave?

Ahead of the event, we talked to Yuri “yuurih” Santos about his transition to support, their T-side woes, playing with molodoy, and their opening game against TYLOO.

I would like to start the interview by talking about you. I saw in our data that since this roster was put together, you've taken a more supportive role. How has that transition been for you?

Actually in the beginning, it worked a lot. It was good for the team, we needed a guy doing the annoying things on the map, and supporting. Not only playing for kills and stuff like that.

But recently, things on T-side for us, as a team and individually, have been hard. So, we're working to fix that. Our T-side is not good.

For me individually, it's been hard, I'm trying to play better. Sometimes as I said, it's more about the team, and the way we're playing.

In the beginning, I was happy to learn new things; But you need to understand when the things aren't good, and change.

Do you guys know what happened to cause the struggle on T-side? Was it just that teams adapted?

Sometimes, when you see good teams struggling and losing, I see karrigan saying: "we try to change and change, and sometimes you get worse", you know.

Normally, we just need to understand the game better, and then change our style. We need to keep this in mind, and not put a lot of focus on change. I think it's more about decisions sometimes, the new things that were changed.

When you watch Vitality playing, they don't change a lot. They understand the game a lot, and they play as a team. I think it's more about that.

You're playing with one of the more unique and interesting AWPers in CS2. As a supportive rifler on T-side, do you feel like you're trying to play off of what he creates, or are you more trying to platform him?

It depends, on some maps, he's going to call more things and as a team we need to understand what he's doing and playing our round. Sometimes, we're going to call something, and he's going to understand how he can play better, and how he can help the team.

So I think that part is easy.

But as I said, when we're trying to change something on the T-side, for him it's bad sometimes. Because he has his style, and when we change how the team plays, he needs to play another style. I think sometimes there's a problem in his understanding. That's it you know, as I see it.

I'm sure that comes with experience, right?

Of course, of course.

As you know, Vitality didn't attend EPL, in your perspective, do you think it's an advantage to take a break between events, or do you run a risk of being rusty in the group stage?

I don't know actually, it depends.

For example, Vitality is winning and playing all the finals in all their tournaments. Sometimes it's good to have a little break, and live outside the game. It's good, not bad.

You need to understand when it's good not to play, relax, chill and come back after.

But I think in their case it's good.

So finally, TYLOO, your first opponent. They've been great in their home region, what kind of unique challenge do they represent?

We're going to watch how they play today, and have a good prep.

We always have good prep against teams. So we're going to see how they play and what they like to do, and of course we're going to have some vision of what we want to do against them.

Every team that's playing Counter-Strike right now at the tournaments can win, and can lose. So you need to always be ready.

I think, to expand on that, the Chinese teams have always had a unique style-

Yeah of course!

-is that still there in your view?

I think yes, TYLOO, Lynn Vision, they have a different style and some plays that you won't see in other teams. We need to study and we need to have good prep, to know those things.

FURIA will step into the ring with TYLOO on Wednesday, March 18th at 18:30 CEST for their opening game of BLAST Open Rotterdam. yuurih thinks they understand their style now, but you'll have to wait 'til tomorrow to figure out if he's right.