After NAVI’s loss to MOUZ in the qualifying match for the IEM Cologne 2025 playoffs, head coach NAVI, Andrii "B1ad3" Horodenskyi gave an exclusive interview to Bo3.gg. He discussed the team’s ongoing adaptation with makazze, the limited time to prepare strategies, and the challenges on the T side despite a structured game plan. 

B1ad3 also reflected on the mental approach between maps and why facing a well-drilled team like MOUZ is especially difficult without full cohesion and deep tactical routines. NAVI now drop to the lower bracket, where they’ll fight for a second chance at playoffs.

What do you think went wrong in this game?

Just sort of the draft game. We need to fix a lot of details. We didn't have time to go through all our strategy book with Drin [makazze], and in crucial games like this, the margins always matter.

Do you think makazze didn’t adapt enough to the team, or was this just an unlucky match?

I think nobody can adapt in this world in this amount of time, so he didn’t adapt. Of course, it’s not physically possible.

Despite a great start on Mirage, it turned into a tough game. At 9:5 there was a key round where things slipped. Looking back, do you feel you need to change something — maybe your map vision or positions?

I don’t think so.

iM had an incredible game, but the rest of the team struggled — no one else even hit 10 kills. What was going on inside the team during the map? What was the atmosphere like in Teamspeak?

Everything was great, the mood was nice. I don’t know — speaking about individual performance, you need to ask the players how they felt. But it’s always like this — one day you find the timing and make good decisions, next day it’s different. I don’t think the problem was on our side. I think MOUZ just played really well.

So there wasn’t any tension or arguing in Teamspeak?

No, no, no.

During the map break, how did you try to lift the team’s spirits? What did you say in the timeouts?

Like reset between the maps, every map is different. One map can be a big surprise from the opponent, another might go as expected. So we always separate the maps. It’s not a problem for us. Sometimes people lose very tough matches, like a 1v1 clutch — that can be hard to shake off. Then you need to mentally refocus and forget about tihs. But for this one, it was fine. We didn’t have high expectations for this tournament — we’re just trying to do our best.

So no speeches or anything?

No, we just have this mentality that one map doesn’t connect to the next. There’s no carry-over.

On Nuke, you seemed to find a key weakness in MOUZ’s playstyle. What exactly did you notice when it worked?

On CT side, we won a force round — that helped us a lot. We guessed some things correctly, like anti-force rounds. And closer to the middle of the game, we found a key component to counter them. We tried to use it, but I can’t say what. The same reason we kind of lost — we’re trying to rush through everything in a short time with a new player, and it’s hard to maintain balance across maps. We didn’t have the same strategic depth as we had before. On T side, sometimes you need to execute very sharp scripted rounds, and we were losing the micro-margins. Like, you play 95% of the round very well, then 5% is sloppy — you miss something, and against a team like MOUZ, who didn’t change their lineup and have strong protocols, it becomes very hard to play.