Aleksib on FURIA: "They have a unique style that's always nice to watch"

NAVI's captain is excited to match up against FURIA for the first time in their current lineups.

Natus Vincere joined FURIA in the Thunderpick World Championship grand final after securing their third consecutive win against The MongolZ in a hard-fought semi-final affair.

Aleksi "⁠Aleksib⁠" Virolainen spoke to HLTV about the back-and-forth series as well as the upcoming best-of-five against Gabriel "⁠FalleN⁠" Toledo and company, which will mark the first encounter between the two teams in their current forms.

The Finnish captain was excited for the match-up and was full of praise of Natus Vincere's opponent ahead of the grand final. "They are our friends and we like to watch their style," Aleksib said. "When you watch CS and some team's playing a style that's maybe a bit more unorthodox, it's always nice to watch. They have that."

"molodoy has cemented himself as one of these combat AWPers. I think YEKINDAR has his own presence on how he wants to do all the plays he's making, and we've seen them create all different kinds of fakes," he went on.

"I'm not sure who's the brain behind that, but I would think that YEKINDAR and FalleN are doing a huge job in that. It's refreshing CS to see and it's exciting to play a BO5 against them."

You can read the full interview below:

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The desk made it out as a surprise that The MongolZ picked Mirage against you. Was it a surprise to you?

No, it wasn't a surprise. I think MongolZ have historically loved this map. We have played against them on this map and went back and forth, they've smashed us on it and we've smashed them on it. So it wasn't a surprise, considering they lost against us last time and they wanted to go with something different.

To be honest, their gameplan worked at the start. They were leading 7-2 and it felt like we couldn't control them.

So how did you get it back from there?

These kinds of leads are so fragile in CS2. You might start to feel the momentum too hard and maybe lose a couple of unnecessary rounds. We got it to 5-7 in the end and then lost the pistol, but we won the first gunround after and we just played a very solid T side, tactically and overall.

On Nuke there was a lot of chaos at the beginning, the second round antiforce, and the round you threw 4v2 to time. Was it difficult to control it from there? What happened?

Yeah, it was pretty tilting. We had a lot of rounds where someone did the wrong role. We really cooked this map for this game and it felt very underwhelming knowing that you kinda threw the game in a way that you couldn't execute your plans like we did on Mirage, for example. It kinda got into our heads and we couldn't play Nuke at all after that.

I feel so bad after w0nderful got this pistol clutch, which was one of the most insane clutches I've seen considering that he didn't have armor. The anti-eco fucked us, the gunround after where we just messed up on time, like you said. Then we got a couple of good ones, but I don't know, we're gonna go back to the drawing board on that.

Talking about this Ancient finish a bit, it was looking like MongolZ could come back, but you took it with the hero AK buy. There was also the round where there was a 4v4 retake on A and b1t pulled out a grenade at just the wrong time as someone was pushing the smoke, I don't know if you remember...

I didn't see this situation, but overall, CT side started very well. We got a bit too arrogant after that, we started to push them even though they were punishing us for the pushes, whereas we played the more passive rounds better. In the end we managed to win a couple more rounds where we played more passive.

Overall we played very well. This hero AK round, in hindsight, won us the game, but overall both teams had pretty decent gunrounds on Ancient, we just managed to win the one round was the most crucial to win the map.

Tomorrow you're gonna be playing FURIA, whom you haven't played in these constellations. Since you played them last, they've gone on this big tear with molodoy being a huge pickup for them. What do you think about them and how you're going to match up against them in the grand final tomorrow?

They are our friends and we like to watch their style. They have a unique style that everybody, when you watch CS and some team's playing a style that's maybe a bit more unorthodox compared to other teams, it's always nice to watch, right? I think they have that.

Overall it's exciting to play against them in a BO5 final considering we're gonna go back and forth on all maps. Hopefully it's gonna be a banger of a game. I don't know what else there is to say, we're gonna go back to the hotel now, do our preparation, do everything we can tomorrow to go out with a bang, and I'm hoping to play good against them.

Date	Matches
Thunderpick World Championship 2025
19/10/2025	FURIA 17:55 Natus Vincere	Match

What do you mean by unorthodox? Is it the way molodoy's asserting himself?

I think FalleN and YEKINDAR, also the style molodoy has, he cemented himself as one of these combat AWPers. I think YEKINDAR has his own presence on how he wants to do all the plays he's making, we've seen them create all different kinds of fakes on all maps, and I'm not sure who's the brain behind that, but I would think that YEKINDAR and FalleN are doing a huge job in that. It's just refreshing CS to see and it's exciting to play a BO5 against them.