Aleksib: "We won EPL and lost Fall Final a week later; it felt like we didn't win anything"

The Finnish captain's elation from winning EPL was "all taken away" after losing in Copenhagen, with NAVI looking to recover in Rio.

Natus Vincere are in the IEM Rio playoffs, but a stumble against FURIA in the upper bracket seeding match means that the ESL Pro League Season 20 champions will start their bracket stage run from the quarter-finals.

NAVI have been perennial contenders for much of the year despite a slight dip after their surprise run to the trophy at PGL Major Copenhagen, including title victories at Esports World Cup and EPL S20 and runners-up finishes at IEM Cologne and BLAST Spring and Fall Final.

The second-place finish in the latter event came as a blow to Aleksi "⁠Aleksib⁠" Virolainen, he told HLTV after Natus Vincere's loss to FURIA, saying that losing in the final to G2 a week after winning EPL made it feel like "it was all taken away."

The Finnish captain also spoke about frustration showing among NAVI's players during their games in Rio and of Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev's loan to Falcons, discussing whether he felt a specter lift after the Ukrainian sniper initially seemed to be set for a return after the Copenhagen Major.

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We're here after your loss to FURIA. You're still in the playoffs, but obviously not the result you would have wanted. Can you tell me about that game and not managing to make it straight to the semi-finals?

They've played a good tournament thus far, and they definitely had the pace today. They constantly gave us a hard time on Nuke, for example, when we started. We made it 10-10 I believe, and they took the most important rounds home after. On Mirage it kinda continued, they switched some stuff on their T side and I just felt like they were hitting way harder than us today.

Between yesterday and today, when I've been watching you all play, it seems like there are some frustrations from players and in the comms. There was a clip on Ancient where you and b1t went back and forth, and the general mood of the team in rounds that are close just seems frustrated. Can you tell me about that?

I mean it's CS, and to be honest, it's something that is kinda natural to us. Even though people say we have really good mental, I do think that is correct, we're not letting things get under our skin that easily. When it's in the heat of the moment you might speak to your teammates in different ways, but we get over it, it's not that big of a deal.

But yeah, to be fair there were some frustrations today as well, and that's something we're just going to take a double check into and fix for tomorrow.

Coming into this event, you had the loss to G2 at Fall Final, the curse was broken, and it was another BO5 loss for you. Tell me about that loss and coming into this event with that in the back of your mind?

I don't think we had it in the back of our minds at all, I think the biggest thing was that we won EPL and then a week later, we lose the Copenhagen Final and it felt to me that we didn't win anything, like it's all taken away from you.

That's how competitive playing CS is right now if you're playing all these tournaments. But yeah, we're here to win, and obviously this loss makes us go to the quarter-finals but that's just the way it goes. We're still playing on the stage and that's a really nice thing. It's just us with our backs against the wall now.

As you said, you were at EPL, then Fall Final right after. This tournament schedule has been really busy, and we will head to the World Final, the RMR, and the Major after. It has been a tough run, have the back-to-back tournaments been getting to you a bit, are you feeling more pressure because of it?

I don't think we're feeling pressure. I do think that the quality of CS can go a bit down, like obviously you're not having as many practice days, you're very limited to bootcamps the whole season, and you obviously try to prioritize the Major as well which is coming up, and that's going to be a long one because you're traveling to China. If you go there for [the RMR], it might be hard to come back home and go back for groups, so you're going to maybe spend a month there.

It's been a grind for us and sometimes it's sloppy. We didn't lose too many games in the past months so we always try to live and learn from our mistakes, and today this was the result and we just need to move forward.

I wanted to touch on your first Major win going into the end of this year. There's not really been an era for any team this year, it's just been a back-and-forth of wins, so can you tell me about NAVI going into this last period of the season and what the overall mentality is, how much a second Major would mean to you in that sense?

It would be a dream come true in a way that you can't imagine. I do feel like we've been grinding our hearts out the past three months or however long the season has been, and we know there is a bootcamp coming up as well.

We just need to play our best CS now, and we know that we're going to have some quality practice coming up at the end of the season just to re-innovate some stuff and try to be a step ahead in our own games.

There was this specter of s1mple hanging over the team around the last Major about whether he would come back. Now, he has gone on loan to Falcons until the end of the year, do you feel like — not that it was haunting you — that specter has gone now?

Yeah, but at the same time I don't think we thought about it at all. I do think that NAVI and B1ad3 usually always have a long vision, and we saw that we were improving as a team so I don't think anyone thought a change was coming up in the near future.

But you know, now we are stumbling a bit, we're not playing as clean as we played a couple of tournaments ago, and everybody knows we just need to pick up the pieces. Today, for example, I had a terrible Mirage and it might affect your confidence, but you always need to bounce back and always have your teammates' backs as well because it might be hard, but we know what we are capable of and we know what we need to do moving forward.

You're going into the arena in Rio, what´s your general feeling on that?

It's the first time being in playoffs here for me. I've been here at least two times previously. I played in BLAST Sao Paulo with ENCE a long time ago and I just remember the crowd was amazing, just going nuts.

I do feel like it'll be nice for us now, after these games, to change the atmosphere and overall vibe because I think if we get that energy from the crowd, we might show up better than we did today.