NAVI’s international squad made their big tournament debut at last year’s IEM Cologne. Still playing with s1mple at that point, the team failed to make the playoffs of the event, but they are now looking good to make the playoffs this year after a dominant win in their opening match against paiN.

After the game, we spoke to their coach B1ad3 about the recent successes of the team and the growth within NAVI’s system in the last year.

Interview was taken and written by Sam "AN1MO" McKenzie

A dominant win over paiN to kick off Cologne, how are you feeling?

Very good, it's always to start off with a win. It's much better to start off with a win. I'm looking forward to more.

Is it good to get a dominant win after a couple of shaky performances at BLAST?

We have a lot of confidence right now, and we had confident matches at BLAST, too. Complexity was confident, BIG was confident, we only had issues with Liquid but I think it was because of the veto, Anubis and Inferno favoured them more than us.

Do you think the fact Liquid are a new team surprised you as well?

Yes, but also we wanted to use BLAST as practice before Cologne to see what is wrong and to play some maps we don't usually play. We wanted to find as many gaps as possible so we can prepare for them.

A while ago you said that winning the Major had potentially come too soon, do you feel differently now you have won another trophy?

Yeah, it helps a lot now that we have the experience of winning. You don't need to force players to believe in something because they know it's already happened, sometimes you can say "Guys, let's go, we can do this," and it's not like that anymore because the players have a different kind of confidence now. The players and the team overall have grown, and it's very good. 

Winning the Major is important for everyone in CS, but was getting a second trophy as important as winning the Major?

Yes. We were finalists at Spring Final too, so we got that experience and knowing whether we had another time to prepare for the BO5 after a really tough match the day before. 

After that, we knew that after the Summer break, we would be in more semi-finals and finals and I expect that because that is how progress works. 

We made this lineup a year ago and had to integrate the system, this was the same for our previous 2021 lineup. It needed a year to implement a lot of things, and after a year I saw how it can work. It's the same with this lineup, I'm seeing progress, and I'm seeing how it works with the dynamics, adding something and fixing other things as the player grows, it's the same picture as it was back then where people are improving and building more synergy.

The strengths of the system and the weaknesses in it, we could see them in London and by EWC, match by match we grow in confidence, even in the bootcamp before EWC people had different approaches to the game than they had one year ago. 

The two trophy wins changed a lot, it's a huge step in our development.

After the Major you also said the next change you wanted was for iM to become a second caller, now you have done that, what is the next growth for NAVI?

To create another caller from our AWPer.

Do you mean getting w0nderful to be more comfortable calling things he wants to do at the start of rounds?

Everything, even in the mid-rounds, he can see the gap and what we need. It's not like "Guys, I'm doing this," it's "Guys, let's do this." he can coordinate two more players with him to do things.

For this you need experience, and I feel like he's growing a lot.