Mareks “YEKINDAR” Gaļinskis spoke about FURIA current form, the upcoming retirement of Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo and the team efforts to rebuild chemistry in an interview with HLTV during the StarSeries Fall media day. The rifler admitted that FURIA have struggled with several issues throughout 2026 and are now trying to address them one by one rather than focusing only on winning a trophy.
FURIA ARE TRYING TO REBUILD THEIR CHEMISTRY
FURIA arrived at StarSeries Fall immediately after their run in China. YEKINDAR admitted that the constant schedule has been exhausting, but said the team have accepted the situation and are trying to focus on the next event instead of complaining about it.
After the loss to G2 at FISSURE Playground 3, the players held a team discussion without trying to blame individuals for the result.
We’re just failing as a team right now, and that’s what we went with after losing in China.
YEKINDAR said the main priority now is restoring the connection inside the roster after several difficult tournaments.
Right now we’re trying to rebuild the chemistry because even though we started the season pretty good, the later the events, the more situations we were putting ourselves in were just worse and worse and starting to snowball.
FURIA ARE NOT THINKING ONLY ABOUT ENDING THE TITLE DROUGHT
FURIA have gone close to a year without a tournament victory after their strong finish to 2025. In 2026, they reached several important finals, including IEM Krakow and the IEM Cologne Major, but have not converted those runs into a title.
YEKINDAR said the team are not approaching every event with the mindset that they simply have to win.
There are a lot of things happening in the team from the start of the year, and it’s more about focusing on and figuring out the problems and the things we have to fix, one by one.
This season, we had bad signals, and we’re focusing on just figuring those out. We’re not thinking about, “Oh, we have to win an event.” It just doesn’t work like that.
FALLEn RETIREMENT IS ALREADY PART OF THE CONVERSATION
The future of FalleN has also become an unavoidable topic around FURIA. YEKINDAR admitted that it is impossible to know exactly how much the upcoming roster change affects the players mentally.
According to him, the team have already discussed the situation openly.
Guys, we know FalleN is going to be retiring; we know we’re playing bad right now. How can we fix it?
YEKINDAR said each player is ultimately responsible for maintaining his own level despite the uncertainty around the future of the lineup.
Mainly it’s everyone’s individual responsibility to be the best version of themselves for the game, for the tournament, and we trust each other. We don’t have talks with a psychologist to deal with this situation. We trust each other.
LEGACY HAVE BECOME AN IMPORTANT TEST FOR FURIA
YEKINDAR also spoke about repeatedly facing Legacy, who have become one of the strongest teams FURIA have encountered recently.
He believes those matches are valuable ahead of the Major because they allow FURIA to understand how to deal with teams that arrive in strong form.
It’s important to play as much as you can against them and against any team that’s coming in hot because you also try to get the knowledge on how to beat them.
FURIA will now continue their schedule at StarSeries Fall, where they open the event against MIBR.
