9INE coach: "Putting Polish CS back on the map in tier-one tournaments is really huge for us"

"I believe teams like NIP and BIG are teams we're fully confident against," Piotr "⁠nawrot⁠" Nawrocki says after defeating MOUZ in the lower bracket.

9INE made the journey to IEM Rio with a spring in their step after surpassing all expectations in the BLAST.tv Paris Major Europe RMR's B group, where they completed a flawless Cinderella run to qualify for the Legends Stage of the the upcoming Major in France and in turn becoming the first Polish roster to qualify for a Valve-sponsored event since Virtus.pro attended their last at the FACEIT Major in 2018.

Date	Matches
IEM Rio 2023
18/04/2023	Ninjas in Pyjamas 19:30 9INE	Match

The Poles ended their first day in Brazil with an even 1-1 record, suffering a best-of-one loss to HEROIC before stabilizing in the lower bracket with an all-important win over MOUZ to stay alive. 9INE will now look ahead to their do-or-die game versus Ninjas in Pyjamas on Tuesday at 19:30 , when they will look to keep their IEM Rio campaign going and be one best-of-three away from securing a coveted playoff spot.

HLTV caught up with nawrot, 9INE's coach, shortly after the Poles' 2-1 win over MOUZ. The skipper touched on the team's first day in Rio de Janeiro, why they've been able to take the scalps of some highly-ranked teams recently, and how 9INE feel about their chances moving forward at IEM Rio.

Congratulations, nawrot. You won your first game here at IEM Rio, a tough one against MOUZ. They let both Vertigo and Nuke through, were you surprised at that?

I mean, Vertigo I'm not surprised because they had to ban Anubis, it's their perma-ban, I believe. And if they banned Vertigo, it would just be Anubis instantly. But Nuke, I was surprised because I thought we were going to play Overpass. I was fully preparing for Overpass, to be honest. So, I mean, I don't want to say it's a bad veto from them, all I can say from my perspective is that it was just weird, to be honest, because Nuke and Vertigo are our best maps. Maybe they saw something they could utilize, but I don't know — just weird.

You took your pick of Vertigo, but then you lost on Ancient. What went wrong on that second map?

I mean, our Ancient, even if we do things good and we have good set-ups, good rotations, something just goes wrong. Ancient, for us, we really tried to fix it, we pretty much had a whole bootcamp to fix Ancient, and we fixed some stuff, but whenever we do fix stuff, a new problem arrives. It's a weird map, man. We're pretty used to needing to go 2-1 in best-of-threes against these teams, so we're just ready for that.

Obviously, you picked Ancient against Heroic as well in the first game. Was that more of the same?

I mean it was kind of a gamble veto from me. It was kind of my idea to... because they were expecting Mirage or Overpass, I believe. From what I could see, they were expecting Mirage or Overpass, it's their two best maps, I would say — let's say the best map.

I decided that we should, if I gamble, ban Overpass and Mirage and leave Ancient and Nuke in, and maybe I hoped they would ban Ancient because they weren't ready for that. But as we saw, they were ready, they didn't think much about this veto. Let's say that it was my bad, I took the responsibility for that and that's it to be honest. I just said to the guys that we need to go big against Heroic, so we risked it, it didn't pay off, but it is what it is.

Well, regardless of that, MOUZ is the third top-10 team you've beaten in the last week alongside G2 and Vitality. How have you achieved this?

I think, to be honest, I don't really know what to say about that. We had a pretty rough period as I said in the last HLTV interview at the RMR. I believe what made us go over the line against these tier-one teams is that, as you might have seen already, hades is hyping up the guys, he's screaming a lot, he's not missing a lot to be honest. A lot of that — the overall energy on the team — comes from hades because Kylar, who is the silent guy on the team, screams a lot now.

On internet, we can't get going, we can't hype each other, we can't scream... it's just weird. On LAN, we come here against tier-one teams and everyone is screaming, hyping each other up, it's just easier to play because everyone is calling a lot more, they're a lot more focused, they're hyped. So, it's a lot easier to play on LAN for us than on the internet. That's a difference for us, I believe.

Which is quite weird because you've been really good online, so, does it feel good to bring that online success also back on LAN?

Yeah it feels sick to be honest because CS:GO is ending right now, I believe, in a few months, so we don't really know what's going to happen next.

So to start, I don't want to say achieving, I'm just saying putting Polish CS back on the map again in tier-one tournaments is really huge for us because it might give us, in my opinion, the best start on CS2. We kind of feel like we have really good chemistry and we really get along with each other, even if there are some... conflicts inside the team, we have one or two days bad because of that but then we fix it.

No-one is holding a grudge against each other, so that's very important for us. The most important thing is that we're starting to show up in these tier-one events and we might have a headstart in CS2, I believe, if we play with the same lineup for a long time. I just hope it goes this way.

You're now going to the second round of the lower bracket, I think it's NIP you're going to face. How do you fancy your chances against them?

I mean, from the top of my head, I'd say that we have a pretty decent veto against them. I kind of think they're not going to let Nuke through this time. So it might be a bit tougher because I'm pretty sure we're not going to play Nuke, so it's going to be a tough best-of-three. But, I mean, we have very skilled players.

I think they're [NIP] not that good at the moment, I feel like they struggle a lot even though the last tournament — the RMR — was good for them, I believe. They did really well I would say. It's going to be a tough match but, if we can win against MOUZ in such a fashion on three maps, then I don't see a problem, to be honest.

After NIP, obviously it's two games to advance so you're probably not thinking about that, but you still have another best-of-three to win to make it to the playoffs. Do you still think that you have a good chance?

I mean so long as we focus on what is in front of us, then I believe we can win against everyone, to be honest. I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I just believe teams like NIP, and BIG in our group as well, these are the teams we're fully confident against. We're not scared of them, we're not afraid at any point. I don't see why we wouldn't make it out of the group.

Also, we're not focused on winning the tournament; I'm really trying to push the agenda that we're focusing on every single game at the time. Every single game is important for us right now because of the ESL rankings and the HLTV rankings, we want to go up whatever we can and, hopefully, win one game at a time.