nafany: "It's obvious for me that a lot of teams are not in their best form"

Vladislav "⁠nafany⁠" Gorshkov talks Gambit's lack of preparation ahead of Katowice, their recovery from a shaky start to the tournament, and the level of competition in the playoffs.

Gambit have locked in a spot in the IEM Katowice quarter-finals after an impressive recovery from a loss to Ninjas in Pyjamas in the opening series of the tournament, which saw the CIS side complete a run through the lower bracket, eliminating Copenhagen Flames, Vitality, and the Swedes in a rematch on the way.

After securing a playoffs spot, nafany spoke to HLTV.org about the lead-up to Katowice, revealing that multiple players had been dealing with sicknesses and that it has affected their preparation before the event.

He went on to discuss Gambit's learnings from the opening match against Ninjas in Pyjamas and how they managed to beat them the second time around, as well as his impressive record in duels against Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut in the series before that, where the French superstar scored his lowest map rating ever on LAN.

Read on to find out what nafany said on those topics as well as changes in Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov's playstyle and why he thinks the AWPer could become a great in-game leader some years down the line:

You managed to take revenge on NIP after losing to them in the opening round. What were the learnings for you from the opening series?

I guess we just have more practice than before. Our preparation for this tournament was a bit shaky, let's say, because four of our players were a bit sick at different times. I think we played with the coach more than with our roster, I mean praccs, so that's why it was a bit shaky. Even at this tournament, interz has some illness — it wasn't corona, but we still didn't play with him for two days, he didn't play CS at all. And he played a really good game.

Were you surprised by the level NIP showed on Vertigo, considering they only recently started playing it again?

To be honest, I don't think they're playing it really strong. They have a lot of mistakes, but it's obvious that when you didn't play this map a lot of times, you will do a lot of mistakes. Just different teams letting them play as they want, I guess, and that's why they're winning.

The first time you played them, you decided to pick to start on the CT side on Ancient, and this time you went for a T side start. Can you explain the reasoning behind that?

We just noticed some weakness on their CT side, so we preferred to start on the T side and try to take as many rounds as we can. That's why.

You lost Overpass in the opening game against them, and from speaking to hampus, he was saying that NIP spotted some holes in your Overpass that he expected you to fix in case you were playing it again. Why did you decide to go for Mirage as the decider this time?

It's better to ask groove because all picks and bans are on him. From my side, I can say that I'm pretty sure that if we played Overpass one more time, we would win it for sure. They showed us our weakness and we already fixed it, I guess. I believe so.

Going back to the Vitality series, you had a great record in duels against ZywOo — did you do any special preparation for him, or what happened?

To be honest, I checked the demo, at least on Mirage... It's just unlucky for him (laughs), I don't know. It was like four times at least on T side when I came behind him and no one was watching me, and I was like 'lol?' His score was like 3-18, and I was like 'wow, it's strange.' In my opinion, he even didn't shoot, we always killed him from behind. And when you have a score like 3-15 or something like that, you're not so confident. Even ZywOo, when he's playing bad, he will play like this.

Over in Funspark sh1ro was playing more aggressively, and I heard that he addressed in on the broadcast saying that he hasn't been doing that this event as much. Is there something you're doing differently with him? Are you using him in a different way?

sh1ro has some secrets, so I can't say something big. In my opinion, he can play any role, even with a sniper. He can be aggressive, he can be passive, it's all on him. He can play even with a rifle, and I'm pretty sure that maybe in six years he will become the best in-game leader in the world. I'm pretty sure about that because this guy is really insane, he's like from a different planet, I guess.

What do you make of the level of the teams here? What are you expecting going into the playoffs and how do you look at the teams that have made it so far?

I don't have very strong expectations from this tournament because it's the first one this year, and it's obvious for me that a lot of teams will not be in their best form. It's a really good chance for teams like Astralis, for example, they can be really good at this event. We need to understand that in the past year it was online, but it was literally the same. A lot of teams were a bit shaky, and that's why we won the previous time, I guess. But now, it's a bit different because it's on LAN, obviously.

Do you not consider yourselves one of the favorites?

I don't know. We don't think about it at all. We're always trying to think like we're the favorites, and we have good form right now, I guess, but we'll try to do our best. That's all I can say.