Aleksib: "It feels good to know you won with good teamwork rather than individual brilliance"

The Finnish in-game leader has beaten his former side G2 five times in a row, the latest coming from 8-11 down on the T side of Nuke.

Aleksi "⁠Aleksib⁠" Virolainen is now 5-0 versus former side G2, and the latest win came in the most dramatic fashion. Natus Vincere, 8-11 down on T side, pieced together the puzzle to push themselves one series away from the Royal Arena.

"I honestly have no clue [what it is with me against former teams]," Aleksib told HLTV. "Except for this game, we had an aura. We just somehow couldn't manage to lose it even though they had a huge upper hand."

NAVI's captain also touched on the squad's imbalance towards the T side, the balance with rotator spots on CT side, and how all of his rookie AWPers come to him having permabanned Nuke.

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I'm here with Aleksib, that's five T rounds in a row from 8-11 down. What is it with you and your former teams?

I honestly have no clue. Except for this game, we had an aura. We just somehow couldn't manage to lose it even though they had a huge upper hand. We kind of played sloppy at the start of T side. In the other games we played against my former teams, usually, we were a bit stronger, but this year against G2 it's been going really well even if a lot of these games could have gone both ways.

What do you think it is, a bit of a coincidence map pool-wise, or actually a mental thing?

I think it can be mental. It can also be the fact that as a leader it's usually easier to play against your former team. [iM makes a yapping hand in the background; Aleksib just stares back] Because you know how things work. Then again, you also need some luck. But yeah, it could be mental. That's the biggest thing.

What is it with NAVI on T sides this year, I think it's something crazy like 56% and then your CT side drops off a little bit. Is that down to you? What do you think that's down to?

I actually don't know. I feel like we have a good connection, especially on officials we have a better T side than in practice. Maybe it's because of focus, maybe it's because of the gameplan — usually in practice, you don't have a gameplan, you might have something to practice, and it might be really bad against certain teams with certain styles — so usually our T sides are way more cohesive in tournaments.

CT sides, usually they are better in practice, and then we kind of lack that on officials. If you have a player who is fired up on his spot, shutting down a round completely, you might have this momentum and you just keep it up. Sometimes we might lack that, a lack of multi-kills, but we're doing a lot of work on our CT sides and today as well, we lost both CT pistols and managed to still somewhat come back to the half. That's the most important thing, to keep the game competitive.

With MR12 — you know what B1ad3 is like with his notes — are you one of those teams that can come in and plan most gun rounds? Is that the type of thing you can use?

No, I wouldn't say that we come in with everything planned to the finest detail from start to finish. We are decent at adapting. The overall game plan is usually really solid but then again it always comes down to individual performances and how we communicate to each other. Now, having the opening best-of-ones behind us and winning both, it feels good but it wasn't easy. We don't need to forget that, there are a lot of mistakes to fix.

I wanted to ask about your balance between different maps. You change a lot between who is the rotator between you, jL, and iM. What's that like, because it's nice to have the primary voice on CT side, and if you're in anchor spots — obviously not on Nuke — what's that balance like?

It's a tough question, we started this lineup and tried to put everyone on spots they are comfortable with, and how we envision the CT side. I can play anchor, but I can also play this supportive rotator role, gathering info and being annoying, and I think we just stuck with something and are making it work. That's the most important thing, giving your players time, giving your team time, to understand the system and how we play.

We've been making it work, but as I said, we're still lacking that something for us to win these games comfortably, or sometimes completely dominate. The wins, usually, are like this: 13-11, 13-10. But in the end, we're still winning, and we're doing it as a team. That's the biggest thing because it feels really good to know you beat the other team with good teamwork and trusting your system rather than individual brilliance or something like that.

That kind of thing is reflected in the rifling trio, they all have very similar ratings overall but map-to-map it's often a different player, at different times. Is that a map-related thing, is there a conscious effort to make one player a star, or are you happy doing it based on who's hot, different days, different maps?

No, I think definitely as a team we are trying to perform. We are trying to play all of our rounds not for one player, but gathering info, and reacting to different info with different rotations, but during officials and when it's stressful it's always harder to pull everything off to the finest detail.

We just need to keep improving and keep having this confidence we are on now. I've been in the Legends stage a lot of times losing opening games, losing best-of-ones, but now I'm on the other side and trying to enjoy the game like we are currently.

Today we had many moments when an individual was shining, like calls or et cetera. iM, on CT Nuke, called this anti-rush on Inner when we had this eco, and we managed to get back into the game because of winning this eco. All of these smaller things are keeping us up today, that's why we won those best-of-ones.

Final question, just on w0nderful's progression. He's one of those players who had a bit of a reputation for being quiet, and not asserting himself all the time in terms of picks and things. You've obviously had that a lot with a lot of young AWPers, but how is that progression going?

I've had plenty of AWPers and plenty of times, usually when I've had this rookie AWPer, when they start to play with me they've not played Nuke. m0NESY, headtr1ck, even mantuu and now w0nderful, all of them permabanned Nuke so... I'm not saying I'm teaching them everything on this map but usually they're working with me, with the coach, working by themselves, and it's always been a long process, but it's always so nice to see these young talents improving.

We've just played m0NESY on the server and he's always, you know, they just won this eco round where he just killed a couple of us, got the AK, and won the round by himself. But yeah, for w0nderful, he's making great progress and he was part of the reason we made the comeback on T side as well. It's just nice to see.