Interview: Saw MUTiRiS brands Blast Premier Spring Final format “unfair”

In this special series of articles, Esports News UK’s coverage of the Blast Spring Final 2024 is in collaboration with the betting partner GGBET UK | Photo by Jonathon Yau

Saw in-game leader Christopher ‘MUTiRiS’ Fernandes has spoken out against what he calls an “unfair” format adopted by the Blast Premier Spring Final, which is taking place this week.

He criticised the tournament organisers for only allowing six of the eight teams in attendance to play in front of the Wembley Arena crowd.

The Portuguese rifler’s side are ranked #28 in the world and were by far the biggest underdogs heading to London – they are the only side at the event not listed as one of the top ten teams in the world.

Since the interview was filmed on the Tuesday media day, Saw have been eliminated from the Spring Final, finishing bottom of Group A with 0-2 losses to Astralis and Faze.

MUTiRiS said on Tuesday: “I’m going to say that it’s unfair that we [have] eight teams here and two teams [aren’t] going to play in front of the crowd. That makes me sad, because the chances we get there are lower.”

To reiterate, his comments came before Saw were eliminated.

MUTiRis also told Blast: “It feels really bad to be destroyed like that, but I think we were just overthinking in so many situations. It’s really bad to play when everyone is uncomfortable. We deserved to lose. I didn’t feel that we were on point in the server. It’s not an excuse and I don’t want it to seem that way, but some of us are a bit sick so maybe that didn’t help. We just didn’t perform as we wanted. We weren’t on the level to play these teams.”

The 31-year-old also expressed concerns surrounding the changes to the Shanghai Major qualification system.

Perfect World, the organisers of the upcoming major, announced that they will no longer be holding open qualifiers for the event in Europe and North America. They would instead be issuing invitations to a closed qualifier, which will be distributed based on teams’ positions in the Valve Team Ranking leaderboard, which is ranked by total prize pool won.

Saw qualified for the PGL Antwerp 2022 and IEM Rio 2022 majors through the open qualifiers, so this was an issue that MUTiRiS felt close to home.

The in-game leader also argued to Esports News UK that teams could see their ranking be inflated by being invited to tournaments that their sponsors are holding.

MUTiRiS said: “The problem with the prizes and the ranking is, you see some tournaments that, for example, you see BetBoom on the team and the tournament called BetBoom Something. I think that’s not fair on the other teams. I don’t know how to fix that, but for me that doesn’t make any sense.

MUTiRiS on rise of the Portuguese Counter-Strike scene

The PGL Copenhagen 2024 major saw records being smashed as seven Portuguese players managed to qualify.

Only one man from Portugal had ever attended any other major – Ricardo ‘fox’ Pacheco – and this new batch of players were all making their Valve-sponsored tournament debut.

MUTiRiS said: “It’s amazing for our country, we are a small country, we lack sometimes in terms of the organisations, they are not so good.

“Saw is a different one. Being able to be at the major with so many players, it’s amazing for our country, because we need to fight a lot to reach that, it’s amazing and I’m really happy for me and for them [the other Portugese players].”

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Reece Barrett

Reece is a sports journalist who has previously worked with the likes of BBC Radio Solent, Southern Daily Echo, Salisbury Radio, VAVEL and many more. He is currently studying a degree in Sports Journalism at Solent University.