nafany: "In Cloud9 I wasn't a leader at all, I was only the IGL"

nafany has learned from his mistakes in Cloud9 and came back to bite his former team in Dubai.

Vladislav "⁠nafany⁠" Gorshkov and BetBoom are into the last four at BetBoom Dacha, having knocked out the IGL's former side Cloud9.

It's a result that validates nafany as a leader, but the man himself, in an interview with HLTV, points to his removal as a turning point: A moment where he decided to be louder, to prioritize the team over what people think of him, and to undertake another project from the ground up.

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KaiR0N-: "We feel like it's a usual tournament; there's nothing special that people do for us"

The fruits of his labor are already being borne. BetBoom stormed into playoffs at IEM Sydney and have now beaten GamerLegion and Cloud9 to repeat the feat at Dacha.

This result is not without controversy, given the conflict of interest present as a result of nafany's squad being owned by the title sponsor of the event, and the 22-year-old also took the chance to address that criticism.

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You've beaten former team Cloud9, eliminated them, give me your initial feelings after that.

As I said on stage, for now, it's a regular game. Of course, I want to win this one, because I want to be in playoffs, not because of Cloud9. But, for now, I'm pretty sure that I'm capable of more than only Cloud9.

Tell me a bit about the squeaky yellow chicken [that he was making noise in timeouts with early on], you're still holding it now of course, there was a little bit more spice to that game. It wasn't completely normal, was it?

Actually, after Cloud9 kicked me, I thought a lot about how captains have to be leaders. In Gambit or Cloud9 I wasn't a leader at all, I was only the in-game leader.

It's easy to remember about cadiaN for example. From my point of view, he's a leader of the team. Even if I don't really like him as a person, as a leader and a captain I respect him a lot and I was thinking a lot about that, and decided I needed to be more spicy when we talk about our opponents.

It's fine if they think that I'm an idiot or something, maybe they will think I'm toxic as fuck, but, in general, right now, this team is more important than what people will think about me.

I wanted to ask about that as well, Cloud9 obviously had a bit of a reputation as a bit of a quiet team. It was only you really shouting, the others were quiet. But this team, it's all of you going quite ham, the atmosphere looked crazy this game. Tell me about that.

Yeah, this team is more hyped. We have KaiR0N- who, in some ways, is a bit like me two years ago, he's really hyped and has a lot of energy. That's what we didn't have at Cloud9 in the last roster, we weren't at our best mental health let's say.

For now, I feel like this team has to be really loud to be in confident form. It works, just check our first game this tournament against MIBR, we were pretty silent and we sucked. Other two games, we were hyped and it works.

Such a young team as well, how important is it to cultivate the culture of being proper LAN warriors. You didn't really get that chance in Gambit, a lot of that early growth was online, but this team you're growing on LAN, at Pari, Sydney, now here. Is that important for a young team?

Of course it's important, but for now it's not the most important thing. We just need tournament practice. It doesn't matter which tournament, online or LAN, whatever, we just need to play as much as we can. Some players need more experience, for sure, and it seems like it works.

Let's say about danistzz for example, he was not in the best shape because he didn't know how to use his feelings. It's really important to play as many tournaments as we can. Online, LAN, doesn't matter, we just need to play as much as we can.

I also wanted to ask about picking Nuke. Obviously permaban for a while in Cloud9 and before, but coming into your own on it now. You were even up 7-1 on T side, how comfortable are you playing it?

I know that we played it once at Cloud9, versus FaZe...

The accident

Yeah. But we played it, and some players weren't happy about that, not that we played it, but that we played a map we never played before and that I didn't understand something as an in-game leader or something. It was tough for me, but I'm feeling really comfortable on this map. Even if we look at statistics, I think it's a good map for me, even if I played it fewer than 20 times officially. For us it's a fine map, maybe some players don't like it, but we're good at it.

Also about the tournament, only the top four get prize money so it's really important for ranking points. Was playoffs your goal, or still gunning for more?

As far as I understand, we'll qualify for the closed qualifiers of the RMR anyway, so it's fine for us. Even without this tournament we did it. But, I'm not sure because it's Valve, anything could happen.

But we came here not for the prize money or something, we just came here to show people that we're capable to make some big wins, let's say. That's our main goal, our minimum goal was to make playoffs and now we did it. Now we can play without pressure, and do even better, I hope so at least. That's it, nothing about ranking. Actually, in my opinion, I rate more and care more about HLTV ranking.

Also just for people to understand, we are BetBoom team and playing at BetBoom Dacha, but you have to understand that it's not making us a special team and they're making everything for us. We even chose activities last, we were the last team. It's more about, for example, practices, we get it last. We're fine with it, we understand that we have to prove that we deserve it.

I understand why people are complaining about BetBoom at a BetBoom tournament, but in general we are a top 15 team on HLTV when they invited us, so it's pretty deserved. We beat GamerLegion, we beat Cloud9, we deserve it as fuck. People have to respect this and understand.

Date	Matches
BetBoom Dacha 2023
09/12/2023	BetBoom 10:55 Virtus.pro	Match
09/12/2023	MIBR 13:50 Spirit	Match