Aleksib: "After having a nice debut with makazze in Cologne, we put our thoughts way above what we actually were"

Aleksib says NAVI are building themselves back from the ground up.

After an incredibly positive top-four finish in Drin "⁠makazze⁠" Shaqiri's debut at IEM Cologne, Natus Vincere struggled. Aleksi "⁠Aleksib⁠" Virolainen and his troops crashed out of tournament after tournament early doors, suffering losses to the likes of 3DMAX and M80 in the process.

A revival was needed, and StarLadder StarSeries Fall was the perfect place for Natus Vincere to begin it, coming in as heavy favorites. The team delivered on that status, romping to the trophy whilst only dropping a single map.

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"I think this tournament we really treated each other as teammates and had fun together, which is important," Aleksib told HLTV, after affirming that the goal of building confidence had been achieved. "I'm happy with how we are changing the direction, but we still need to show it against good opponents. This is the first stepping stone."

Fresh from his team's trophy-winning campaign Aleksib sat down with HLTV to talk about their recent struggles and how this event win will help them turn things around.

Listen to the full interview here.

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What are your thoughts on that series?

I think that we started kind of strongly, but they fought back better than last time, I felt like. We always had those individual rounds against them, especially in this tournament, that switched the momentum. Like b1t had a very nice highlight on Inferno, we won some anti-forces because of individual brilliance, and that's something that's very nice to have as a team for your confidence.

When you're watching all the top teams currently, they will nearly always win one of these rounds in a BO3 series, and it nets them these three momentum-swing rounds that completely decide the games. So I'm happy we managed to do that and overall play some solid CS.

A lot of the talk coming out of NAVI was that this was a confidence-boosting tournament. Do you think it did the job?

Yeah I think so, but at the same time you can always have the other side of the coin, you always ask yourself, 'What if we would lose this tournament?' It would have demolished our confidence even further (laughs). It was a necessary step for VRS points and we wanted to play more as soon as we knew that makazze was joining the team, so we accepted the invite a long time ago. We didn't think that we would be in the state in the VRS that we are now, so I'm happy that we played a good tournament considering that.

Overall, considering how our previous games went… we played some online officials, kept losing, we lost at home and at bootcamp, so I really just want to get more LAN games under our belts. Having a trophy for makazze is very important for me and I think for him as well, it's always nice.

How important was it not just in terms of confidence, but also for the vibes in the team?

Yeah it's important, and I think this tournament we really treated each other as teammates and had fun together, which is important. Many people could think that it should be the case with all teams all the time, but trust me, it's not easy at times, and the core of our team has been together for a long period of time now. I've seen teams crumble with less time spent together and I've been on those teams as well, so I'm happy with how we are changing the direction, but we still need to show it against good opponents. This is the first stepping stone.

When playing this tournament, was there less or more pressure knowing that you were coming in as the favorites?

The thing is that I could see that we had pressure, or something was up, in the first game against 9INE when we just got dominated on the first map. We went outside and you could feel like the pressure went away, or the first shakiness, and I was confident that after that game we were going to play very solid and have the chance to not drop a single map.

For me it was very important to see that the way I visualized it — that we drop everything, all the nerves and stress that we have, play our game it see how it goes — we managed to do it. Sometimes you're thinking about it and still losing, but now I really saw the other side on how we could play as a unit, and we really trusted each other this tournament. I think that's why we won in a dominant fashion.

Now that you've played this tournament, had a bit of an upswing and got some wins under your belt after a period of form that wasn't so good. How much do you think you had issues with the way you were playing versus issues with confidence?

It's hard to say, to be honest. That's the thing, if you would have those kind of answers you would probably make faster improvements and understand where to go.

After having a very nice debut with makazze in Cologne we put our thoughts way above what we actually were at that moment. It was a bit unfortunate that we had to play some games online because I felt like, with the nature of how NAVI works and have for the last two years, not playing a single game online, as we started losing and we couldn't have these debrief discussions seeing each other, it really took some of the vibe and energy away from us. At least that's how I felt.

At the end of the day, I feel like confidence is a huge factor and I feel like that's also the reason why we played well at Cologne; we had a new player, our playbook was very small considering that makazze had to learn so many things in two weeks, and we managed to play very good. After that we just had too high expectations, and the mood, confidence, everything was going out the window.

I'm happy that we could take a breather, have a tournament like this, and really build it up again, because that is important when you are thinking about every team. Seeing teams change players and have these honeymoon periods, so to speak, it's always super important that the individuals have confidence in their own game and the trust in their team.