s1mple: "We'll do everything to prove we're becoming stronger"

Natus Vincere made it through to the playoffs following two dominant wins over the last two days, over Liquid and fnatic, where the CIS-based team clinched 12 rounds on the CT side of Inferno.

"We have nothing to lose," s1mple says

We quizzed Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev about their last two matches and being able to stabilize at the end of the group stage, as well as Na`Vi's goals for playoffs.

Going back to your previous match against Liquid, which was a rematch from the Main Qualifier, how did you approach the second time?

First of all, we knew it was going to be either Overpass or Inferno, because they played really well against FaZe on Overpass for T side and we know that they are probably scared to play against us on Inferno, because we started winning against everyone on this map.

We watched their demo and saw that they really liked to A, they like to do executions from banana, they like to go four long and one guy lurking from toilets. We started really well, but in some rounds we failed in 4-on-2 or 4-on-3 situation, but electronic saved these two rounds. It was a good matchup for us.

Was fnatic a good matchup as well?

Yeah, but it was a bit harder to predict what map it was going to be with fnatic. We knew that their best map is Inferno, our best map is Inferno, but we expected to play like Train, first of all, and of course Cobble. Kane and Zeus wanted to bait them into picking this map, because it was their fifth or sixth best map.

We started, as I said before, well, Edward clutched a 1-on-1 in the pistol and we started playing better, better, and better. I think the main reason that we won so many rounds on the CT side that we took banana control with three players almost every round, that was the main reason that we had so many rounds on the CT side.

Your whole run throughout the qualifier and here was up and down up until this point where you won two matches in a row comfortably, have you been able to get past that, or is it something you're still working on?

In the first game at the qualifier and the first game of the Major, after the win, we lost our confidence, we even lost our mental confidence, and we understood it, we worked and talked a lot with our manager, Ugin, he's kind of a psychologist, so he helped us a lot before every game to concentrate only on Counter-Strike, not like other games.

We're not joking around before games, sometimes we joke, but everyone understands from this moment that it's really important for us to be fully concentrated, to be fully focused, and to win the game.

Will you be able to do that in the playoffs? You now have three more to prepare, maybe get a little bit more practice in, what is the mood going into the playoffs?

We will probably get QB Fire, SK, or one more team from 3-2, so we're going to prepare for them. I hope there are going to be computers in Boston like in Atlanta so that we can practice and watch demos together.

Now we have nothing to lose, because it was really scary not to go to playoffs, to go out in groups, because a lot of people expected for us to go into the top eight, our CIS fans, so... now we're going to do everything to prove that we are becoming stronger and stronger.

How far do you think you can take it, what is the goal now that you're in the playoffs? Simply step by step?

Yeah, it's step by step. Of course all the teams have the main goal to win the Major, but everyone should start from the beginning.

Who are going to be your biggest rivals there?

It's going to be FaZe or SK, FaZe because they became really strong and SK, even if they have felps, we see that they can play well too, they have their confidence at this tournament.