Perfecto: "I believe that we can compete well, even create some kind of era for Counter-Strike"

Perfecto has come to Cloud9 with the ambition of matching his achievements in Natus Vincere.

Ilya "⁠Perfecto⁠" Zalutskiy and Denis "⁠electroNic⁠" Sharipov have a new home. They departed Natus Vincere to link up with Abay "⁠HObbit⁠" Khassenov, Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov, and Sergey "⁠Ax1Le⁠" Rykhtorov with the stated aim of dominance.

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We will have to wait to see the full roster after visa issues denied Ax1Le the chance to compete at IEM Cologne's group stage, but Perfecto was bullish of what the team can achieve upon his return.

Winning tournaments and chasing an era is "the only way" he wants to play. It would have been easy to temper expectations, particularly at a tournament Cloud9 are competing in with a stand-in. Instead, he poured fuel onto the flame. Expectations within the team, it seems, are just as high as they are from the community.

This interview was conducted with translation courtesy of Cloud9 manager Aleksandr "Sweetypotz" Shcherbakov.

What are your initial thoughts on leaving NAVI for Cloud9? It's been a while since you've had a new team, so tell me what it's like.

It's kind of sad to leave NAVI because we had a great path, a great history, and we won a lot of tournaments. I really do believe that I have friends there. We departed from NAVI with good relations, but now we are in a team that I also personally trust deeply. And I believe that we can compete well, even create some kind of era for Counter-Strike.

Just to confirm, was it your decision to leave NAVI?

Yeah, it was my decision.

We heard a little bit from groove saying you might have a seven map pool. Is that true?

You can see in the next tournament because we're not sure what we can play, but yeah you can see.

What about the style of play for Cloud9. They're know to be very slow. How much of a stamp is electroNic able to put on the team? How much of the new system is him and how much is what was there before?

It's too early to say about the playstyle, and the synergy of electroNic and the former team, because we're currently playing with a stand-in. To get an easy way to communicate when it's fast-paced, to get a successful guess, we're just playing some simple things to get to know and adapt very quickly. For now it's not the time to say about the playstyle, only with Ax1Le can we say about that.

Tell me what it's like to play with sh1ro. You've played with s1mple for a long time, but how does sh1ro compare?

I've known sh1ro for a very long period of time, we are kind of friends, so it is easy for me to get used to his kind of style of play. We have good conditions in Cloud9, which is the best possible way for us to show the best results. I believe we can achieve the same as with s1mple and even more.

How big of a miss is Ax1Le? People expected you could hit the ground running with him at this event, if he does come back would you still have the same expectations? How high are you aiming?

It's difficult, but it doesn't change my personal aim for any tournament; it's only the win. I want to be realistic, it's pretty hard to play as a new team with a substitute. But anyway, it doesn't change my mind and I do want to win. It takes some time to build a system, but that it is not the goal we intend. We want to show great results from the very beginning. The obstacles don't matter.

Last question, you mentioned earlier maybe having an "era." Is that the only goal of this team, to be completely dominant?

I got used to this feeling in NAVI, so I have reached this goal before. After this limit was crossed I haven't got any kind of opportunity to think another way. This is the only way I want to play.

Date	Matches
IEM Cologne 2023
01/08/2023	Cloud9 16:00 GamerLegion	Match