nafany: "We don't have any excuses right now"

The Cloud9 captain spoke to James "⁠BanKs⁠" Banks on broadcast after Cloud9's harrowing elimination at the hands of IHC.

Cloud9 have been sent packing from the first Big Event of the year, IEM Katowice, which they entered with a new lineup. The team had held off making a roster change for over two years, the longest holdout among top teams, but felt they needed to refresh their approach after exiting the IEM Rio Major in the quarter-finals despite a favorable bracket draw.

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Armed with Timur "⁠buster⁠" Tulepov in place of Timofey "⁠interz⁠" Yakushin, the team got off to a strong enough start in the Play-In stage upon their arrival in Poland, defeating IHC 16-5 on Mirage and taking down ENCE 2-1 to qualify for the group stage. However, their tournament run came to a grinding halt from that point, a best-of-three loss to Natus Vincere giving way to a shocking defeat at the hands of IHC in the lower bracket.

The Mongolian team edged out wins on Inferno and Mirage to net a 2-0 victory and send the Russian side packing from the tournament, an absolutely disastrous result for a team that contains two of the world's top five players in the world, and one that is ranked 24 spots higher than their competitor.

After the match, Cloud9 in-game leader Vladislav "⁠nafany⁠" Gorshkov briefly spoke to BanKs in an interview on broadcast, giving his initial thoughts on the loss. "We don't have any excuses right now," the 21-year-old stated. "If we will watch it, our preparation and our communication, it wasn't perfect at all. For now it's not a 'buster' problem, it's just... shit happens. Sometimes you have to make some steps back to make more steps forward, and that's it."

When asked whether he felt Mirage got stressful, a question based on the way Cloud9 were playing towards the latter portions of the map with more aggression than they usually exhibit, nafany was quick to express his denial. " I don't think so, it wasn't stressful at all," the Russian captain said. "As far as I can see, again, the worst thing in our game was our communication."

"If we will look back to old times when HObbit just came in, we also weren't ready to play any tournaments let's say, "nafany continued, in response to a question about the team still needing time to adjust after making a player change. "The first tournaments were awful, as this one I mean, so I'm pretty sure that we just need some time to speak about how we want to play in the future, and that's it."