nafany: "We've played way better than we played in Katowice, and everyone can see it"

The Russian in-game leader sat down with HLTV after Cloud9 earned an ESL Pro League Season 17 grand final berth with a 2-1 victory over ENCE.

Cloud9 came into ESL Pro League Season 17 off the back of a disappointing showing at IEM Katowice. The Russian team, who were making their debut with Timur "⁠buster⁠" Tulepov in their ranks, struggled to get much going after making it to the group stage, bowing out in 13-16th place following back-to-back losses to Natus Vincere and IHC.

Date	Matches
ESL Pro League Season 17
26/03/2023	Cloud9 16:05 FaZe	Match

Regardless, Cloud9 have showed a completely different face in their campaign through ESL Pro League Season 17. The Russian troupe finished Group A as the top seed and secured a spot in the quarter-finals following victories over G2 and Outsiders before cruising to the title decider with 2-1 wins over MOUZ and ENCE.

HLTV was able to catch up with Vladislav "⁠nafany⁠" Gorshkov not long after the team's 2-1 win over ENCE in the semi-final. He touched on what it's like to have the crowd's support, the team's performance in Malta thus far, and who out of FaZe and Natus Vincere he would like to face in the best-of-five grand final on Sunday.

To start, the series versus ENCE was a rematch of your IEM Dallas grand final. Was there any pressure facing them again?

I can't say that we had any pressure, but playing with a new player [buster], it's kind of new to play a semi-final. Let's say that it was different, but I can't say that there was some form of pressure or something like that, it was just different.

One thing that was noticeable whilst watching was that the crowd was very much on your side. Would you say that played a part in how you performed individually?

I think it's our second-ever tournament where we've had the crowd's support; it's pretty cool to have a lot of people cheering for us. But, I think we're on the level where the crowd is helping obviously, but it doesn't help as much as it helped when we were in Dallas, let's say.

Your first LAN with buster was at IEM Katowice, but things didn't go according to plan. You've since stepped up here at Pro League, would you say starting in Group A and then having three weeks' practice time before playoffs has been beneficial?

Yeah it was beneficial for us. I mean, it was not buster's fail at Katowice, it was our fail as a team. We made a lot of mistakes, not in-game but more when we were preparing for the games. As you can see, the result of our work between Katowice and EPL playoffs... we've played way better than we played in Katowice, and everyone can see it.

How are you feeling about tomorrow's game? It's your first grand final in close to a year, any thoughts there?

I mean it's pretty nice to be in a grand final again. But, as always, it will be a really tough if we lose it. I just believe that we will do our best and show our best game, and I hope we will beat whoever it [the opponent] will be.

And to wrap it up, do you have a preference on who you want to face on Sunday?

It will be nice to take revenge against NAVI since we lost to them at Katowice. But, if we beat FaZe, we will get some money [for denying an Intel Grand Slam win], so it will be nice as well.