Aleksib on tiredness: "Our flow is taking us over this mental barrier"

The Finnish IGL is adamant his team can't take their foot off the gas.

When Natus Vincere secued their first trophy in 2024 at PGL Major Copenhagen, their win was quickly branded as a fluke by some parts of the Counter-Strike community.

Aleksi "⁠Aleksib⁠" Virolainen's troops quashed the rumors with aplomb, however, and now have three titles and the number-one spot in the world rankings after a rich vein of form.

After Natus Vincere's opening win against Falcons at the BLAST Fall Final, Aleksib spoke to HLTV about the victory, the team's atmosphere after back-to-back events, and their rivalry with Vitality.

If you cannot see the SoundCloud embed above, listen to the interview here.

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Congrats on the win. It got quite close on Ancient, but are you still happy with your performance today as a team?

Yeah, I'm happy about everything because we didn't have too much time after EPL to even celebrate the win or go through our games. We had a super early match here, and we had a good discussion yesterday evening. The overall confidence of the squad and the way we approached the game are the reasons why we won 2-0 today.

Also on the Ancient T-side, we had a lot of XvX situations we could have won, which would have made their money completely broken. We ended up losing round after round, but we just knew that as long as we got the game rolling on CT, we could bring the game back, and that's what we did.

You said you flew here directly from EPL. Is the team feeling any tiredness right now?

For sure, because throughout the playoffs in EPL, at least the last two days, we played the last game and started around seven, and the final started around five o'clock. Our schedule was a bit different, and now today we woke up after eight, and I can feel that some of the team is a bit tired, me included. But at the same time, the flow we have currently is kind of taking us over this mental barrier, which is a good sign.

Speaking of your flow, you broke quite a few curses at EPL — the best-of-five and the Spirit ones. Do you expect the feel-good atmosphere in the team to carry you through this event as well?

I think that will bring us a lot, as it did in this game. We just need to go one game at a time, and the first step is to qualify for the playoffs. After we make it to the stage, we have a clearer vision because we will most likely go through some of the games we played at EPL and this opening game ahead of the stage matches. We're just going to ride the flow now and trust our own game because we're playing super solid together.

You say the first step is the playoffs, but what do you expect here? You're obviously in title-winning form, so is the trophy the only thing you would be happy with here?

We all understand that if we play to our best capabilities, the reward will be a trophy. For us, it's about not getting too stuck in our heads and thinking that we're going to win everything without hard work or without being humble. That's the thing we tried to speak about yesterday evening as well, that we have the right mentality at any tournament we go to and that's going to bring us the flowers.

You've been fighting with Vitality for the number-one spot in the HLTV rankings, and retook it after your EPL win. Is that something that you want to achieve as a team?

Yeah, for sure, it obviously depends on how these tournaments go and if we are going to avoid each other. We for sure want revenge, because they still beat us on the biggest CS stage, beat us in a best of five, and they clearly were the better team that day. We might perform better against some other teams, and that's just the name of the game sometimes, but we need to show that we're capable of beating them as well.