iM: "If we win the Major and I'm last on the scoreboard, no one cares"

The Romanian rifler believes that the semi-final match against G2 will be far more difficult than their previous meetings.

Natus Vincere have kept their Major run alive, beating back the Turkish side of Eternal Fire in a hotly-contested two-map series to secure their semi-final berth. Ihor "⁠w0nderful⁠" Zhdanov and Justinas "⁠jL⁠" Lekavicius starred for their squad throughout the match, with the former player securing numerous multifrags with the AWP while the latter locked down a number of key clutches that got his team over the line.

With his team now preparing for their semi-final matchup against G2, Mihai "⁠iM⁠" Ivan is now just one victory away from securing his second-consecutive Major final appearance. iM had previously enjoyed this impressive accolade with GamerLegion, starring for side before faltering to hometown heroes Vitality in the finals.

Shortly after his team's quarter-final victory, iM spoke with HLTV regarding the hotly-contested matchup, how he views Natus Vincere's chances of hoisting the Major trophy, and the criticism he has received for his individual performances.

Editor's note: The interview was conducted before the G2-MOUZ quarter-final was played.

Alright iM, through to the semifinals. Tell me how you're feeling after getting there.

It feels great to win, it feels great to play on the stage again, especially at the Major. I've played only once on the stage, it was last Major, but it feels different, in my opinion. It has a good feeling to play, especially if you win.

How does it feel different this time?

From the last time? It didn't feel that different because... we had the fans with us, that's the only difference that there was but we'll see in the next stages. Last time in the Paris Major we had the fans against us in the finals, right? [Here] we felt like everyone was with us, [Eternal Fire] had some fans as well, but we had the majority. It still feels great to have them, to cheer for us, to hear them.

At the end of the group stage Aleksib said that it was nice to win with teamwork and not individual brilliance, but this game there were so many clutches, and w0nderful had a really good game. Can you just tell me about that, watching the clutches and w0nderful's performance as well?

I mean, w0nderful's performance was crazy, he went into beast mode. He was just killing left and right, he was at one point saying that he's fucked, the round on Inferno where he aced on the A site. I'm just saying "I can flash in two seconds", or something like this, I flash for him, and he says "I'm dead," but he killed five. He basically hit everything, hit every shot, which is very good and whenever you have an AWPer like this, it's hard to lose.

As a team, I think we kinda struggle a bit stats-wise. We fucked up a bit, but it's very good that we came back every time with clutches, like you said. It's very good to have this, because it's a part of CS, clutches, and then jL was very on-point with his clutches.

Talking about the struggles a little bit, on Mirage, you guys went up 9-3 but the CT side was a little rough. Even during the group stage Aleksib was talking about having some CT struggles. Can you just walk me through that and share some of the issues from your end or on the team's end?

Obviously, I cannot say our issues, because we're gonna maybe play this map in the semifinals. With our gameplan, everything worked on T side, we had the flow. Then on CT side, we lost pistol, and then they had the flow. We knew what to do, we had a lot miscomms between Mid and A as well. Then they just ran over us basically, we couldn't handle it. After jL clutched again, we came back. Even Aleksib said, when he clutched at 12-10, "jL just won us the game", and then jL was like "No no no no, wait wait wait", and then we won it.

Touching on this return to playoffs, something that jL said, another player returning after a run last year, is that for NAVI you may not win, but you'd like to make a deep run. He said that after you qualified in the RMR; how do you feel about that statement now that you've made it to the semifinals?

I heard the statement, to be honest, but obviously as the NAVI organization you want the deep runs, you want the win. Like I said before in the other interviews, we'll try our best to win, we'll try our best to play the best game each game, and then we take it step by step. If you're beating quarterfinals, it's very good, if you're beating semifinals, so on. The finals are [just] gonna be another game as well.

I wanted to touch on your individual performance a little bit, because it's been a talking point, at least in the losses. You've had a couple of good games in the wins, and then the losses were a bit of a struggle. B1ad3 said he thinks you wanted to show what you can do on stage. Can you talk me through your own individual performances and how you're feeling?

I mean obviously I saw a lot of comments about me, that I play bad, that I need to be kicked and stuff like this. Usually I don't care, probably it affected me a bit, but I don't feel that I played bad. For example, the only game that I feel like I played bad, no matter the stats because I don't care about stats, it was the Spirit game. I know that I played good as a team player in any other game, and I just did my job. If I don't kill some ecos or something like that, that's the game.

Sometimes you have stats, sometimes you don't have stats, but if you win it's good, I will take it every time. You can be the bottom of the scoreboard, and if you win I'm happy with that. Imagine, if we win the Major now, and I'm the last guy on the scoreboard, no one cares.

Talking about that possibility, tomorrow you're going to have the semi-finals against either MOUZ or G2. Can you tell me about how you feel about that matchup, and the potential going into that game?

I mean, both games are going to be hard. Obviously, if you're going to play MOUZ, I don't think we won a single time against them. It's going to be another duel against siuhy, which is gonna be crazy. Against G2, we beat them every time if I'm not wrong, but this time it's gonna be way way harder, because they want to beat us at one point. We cannot have the Aleksi charm for the whole time. Both games, no matter what the team will be, are gonna be hard. We'll try to do our best.

Would you like a siuhy match in the semis?

Obviously, I want a siuhy match, of course. Like I said, they beat us every time, and I need to beat him at one point, right? I'll cheer for siuhy so I can play against him. If you say it's gonna be MOUZ winning, it's gonna be either me or him in another final in a row, so I think it's a good one.