
FUT Esports coach András “coolio” Ferchak, in an interview at PGL Masters Bucharest 2026, discussed the reasons behind replacing Nikita “cmtry” Samoletov with Álvaro “SunPayus” García, assessed the atmosphere within his team, and discussed the team’s preparations for this tournament.
I think cmtry performed pretty well at the start of the year, but when we faced teams from the top 5, it became clear that he still had a lot to learn. To be honest, he lost his confidence and started fixating on his mistakes. When we had the opportunity to bring in a more consistent sniper in SunPayus, we took it.
At first, I was a little concerned about the change in the team’s atmosphere, since xfl0ud and lauNX are completely different people. As for SunPayus and cmtry, they’re very similar—both create a positive atmosphere, crack jokes, and keep everyone in good spirits. Right now, we’re still showing great energy. No one on our team is getting down, and dziuggs is still yelling like crazy. In terms of atmosphere, nothing has changed.
We had an 8-day boot camp with a very intense schedule. We trained from 10:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., and then spent a lot of time outside playing soccer and building team chemistry. I’m not going to say that our team will win this tournament or make it to the finals. Right now, it’s important for us to play as many official matches as possible. I’ll note that we won every event in Bucharest we participated in—DraculaN Season 3 and PGL Bucharest 2026. If we win here for the third time, I’ll definitely consider moving here.
Today, FUT Esports defeated TYLOO in the first round of the group stage at PGL Masters Bucharest 2026 with a 2-0 map score (13-9 on Nuke and 13-6 on Ancient). Tomorrow, coolio’s team will play a match to advance to the 2-0 bracket.
Photo by Stephanie Lindgren, BLAST.