Boombl4: "I'm really surprised, a lot of fans screaming my nickname"

The Cloud9 captain was appreciative of the warm reception upon return to LAN.

Kirill "⁠Boombl4⁠" Mikhailov has been absent from the top of the Counter-Strike scene ever since he was removed from Natus Vincere in May 2022, but was finally offered the opportunity to return when he joined Cloud9 at the start of November.

The Russian in-game leader has big shoes to fill as he takes the spot left vacant by Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov, whose stepping down meant that Cloud9 were left without an AWPer, but the change has immediately helped Cloud9 turn a down period of results around.

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The captain debuted for the team with a 3-4th place finish in Thunderpick World Championship, where they lost to FaZe. They continued that form at BLAST Fall Final by notching wins over NAVI and HEROIC, and taking both Vitality and FaZe the distance despite close losses for another top-four finish.

Speaking to HLTV after Cloud9's narrow loss to Vitality in the semis, Boombl4 explained how he was caught off-guard by the warm reception both he and Cloud9 received when they took the stage.

"I'm just really surprised, a lot of fans screaming my nickname and our team and support," the Russian captain said.

"I just wanna say thank you for every fan who came here and the fans who are watching the Twitch stream. It was really crazy emotions by me because I had two years without LANs, my last crowd was in Antwerp. I'm just really happy."

He also touched on the matches that Cloud9 played and their inability to close out leads on Mirage and Inferno vs. Vitality, saying that the team was nervous and that is the main issue they need to fix. Despite that, though, Boombl4 said he was happy with the result as Cloud9 took the fight to every team and only narrowly lost out to the best.

"Of course, FaZe and Vitality are top teams right now in CS2, and of course we have a new structure in the team and only 10 days on bootcamp, we don't have a lot of work on some maps.

"I'm just happy because we have a top-four, we were fighting for the final, it was really close, and we still have some tournaments this year."

Cloud9 will next attend BetBoom Dacha from December 5-10.