electronic: "We felt a bit of pressure because we want to play in front of our crowd"

To hear his thoughts about qualifying for the playoffs of StarSeries i-League S5, we caught up with Denis "⁠electroNic⁠" Sharipov.

Despite being one of the favorites, Natus Vincere didn't have a great time in the group stage of StarLadder i-League Season 5. Last season's runners-up started by losing to TYLOO, fell to MOUZ, but ended up taking the three needed wins by defeating VG.Flash, Virtus.pro and AVANGAR.

electroNic answered our questions about the tournament, losing to MOUZ and his history with Andrey "⁠B1ad3⁠" Gorodenskiy in a post-match interview.

You guys were playing against mousesports yesterday, you picked Mirage but it didn't end up going well. Can you tell me a bit about that map, what were the issues there?

We practiced Mirage a lot, I would say that we feel really confident on Mirage, everyone feels confident. Maybe I don't, I'm playing really bad on this tournament, at least I feel like that. But I'm still trying everything to do better. But yeah, we were really confident on Mirage and that's the reason we picked it, when we lost to mousesports we talked a bit about it and now we won Mirage versus AVANGAR, who play a great Mirage. We are still confident in our Mirage game.

Talking about the AVANGAR game, coming into that match - if you lose you are eliminated. Did you feel some pressure in terms that you need to win the game and get to the playoffs and the Kiev crowd?

We felt a bit of pressure because we want to play in front of our crowd in Kiev. We always enjoy playing in front of our fans. We really wanted to win against AVANGAR and we did it. They are a really good team right now, we practiced for them, we watched some of their demos on Mirage, on Inferno, on all maps on which we want to play versus them.

They are a CIS team, you practiced against them, played against them, did you feel in the game that they knew what you were doing, did that make it tougher for you? Were they in your head in that way?

I don't think so, we don't play versus AVANGAR in practice, we played one or two times since I joined Na`Vi and I think they had a different style now.

When you joined the team, s1mple said that you are a different player to what he is used to seeing in the CIS region and he gave props to B1ad3 for bringing you up. Is there something you remember from playing with B1ad3, something that he taught you that you are thankful for?

I learned a lot from B1ad3, he taught me as much as he could. I really want to tell B1ad3 thank you, I appreciate the time spent with him, he gave me a base on which I build my game now.

Can you compare playing under Zeus and under B1ad3?

B1ad3 has more structure, I think Zeus has a balance of structure and freedom. They are both really great captains.

You got to the playoffs, can you tell me about your feelings right now?

We are really happy, we really wanted to go through the playoffs and we got it. I think we can win this tournament so we will do our best in the playoffs.