Insider Gaming spoke to NAVI Head Coach Andrii ‘B1ad3’ Horodenskyi after NAVI’s harrowing 9-13, 2-13 defeat to Legacy in the EWC 2026 Counter-Strike tournament.
The Ukrainian coach broke down how he saw the loss and how he sees the potential future of the NAVI roster after the decision to not make roster changes in the summer.
Insider Gaming interview with NAVI Coach B1ad3 at the Esports Worlds Cup
Obviously, a disappointing match in a lot of aspects today. What are your first thoughts?
First thoughts? We can play better.
On an individual level, it felt like your players really weren’t online, except w0nderful on Inferno. makazze went 7-16 on Inferno, for instance. Are these stats sustainable for having success in Counter-Strike?
[Jokingly] Unacceptable. We need to kick him.
I don’t know, we need to see how it goes to speak with him. It’s mainly always a question to the player: why he played like this. I cannot go into his mind to understand what happened with him. It’s, it’s all about him, how he plays like this.
But this CS also, it’s all about decision-making. Opponent can have momentum, punish you, you can lose confidence. Yeah, everything is experience. We’ll see what happens next.
Do you feel like the players weren’t awake coming into the series?
No, I think it’s not good. If you want to win, of course we must be stable, you must be consistent.
Obviously, it’s like basic stuff, and it’s not even about makazze. I think we, as a team, played not so good. We had so many good situations that we usually close out.
Usually, it’s not a problem for us at all. CS is overall about advantage. You create advantage for yourself, then you just execute the advantage, you just use it.
Three times when we had advantage on CT side, we just lost the round, which says that we most likely will not win. You need to.
When you play a good opponent, you play basically equally. They win a round, and the round that they needed to win with advantage, they win, and then we have the round with advantage, we win. Then just play chess, round by round.
But when you start to lose your round where you’re supposed to win, how do you win at this kind of level of CS? It’s impossible.
You come into Ancient, you lose a 2v1 to start on the pistol round. And it just felt like the body language like of the players was very flat, you know. Do you think there was a mentality issue in the server today?
Yeah, mentality is a lot of stuff. Mentality. I mean, you can say for every game that you lose. But the problem is mentality every game, because you could do better, right? At some moment, you could do better.
That means always mentality. But my point is, we start Ancient 5v3 pistol, and we lose it again. T side. We should not lose this kind of pistol. The game starts with this.
If Ancient starts with a good T side, it’s a different game. When you give them economy and advantage, of course we can lose like this. They start to believe in themselves a lot.
So, I think it’s a lot about quality of our plays and decision-making in a crucial moment. That’s all the same for an opponent.
Something we’re supposed to win, we need to win, and what is important thing about is that we usually win. So it’s not like we are asking for a miracle to happen. It’s something basic for us.
We played the previous season the same lineup. It’s basic. We can beat Vitality. Even if they, in the tournament, they’re still a good opponent.
You cannot beat them if you play like today. You cannot. Never. Okay, and you cannot beat other teams.
It’s like I said, for example in the Major, we beat Legacy with this lineup, right? I mean try didn’t play. But my point is that I know how we can play, and we can play much better.
And obviously mentality is part of this stuff. We need to go to the room and to speak to each other, like, ‘What happened?’
In the offseason, your performance coach Xirreth left for Astralis. Do you think that’s an element that affected you today?
No, we lost the same way versus G2 and Falcons in the Major, and we had our performance coach. I mean, we still lost, you know? And before that, before that, we lost.
You cannot imagine how many games we lost like this. I remember this Major versus FaZe in Budapest, like all other tournaments would say, like Kraków, we lost to Spirit, to FURIA. Mentality was a problem.
So let’s not think that there is some big difference, a game changer. I’ve known it for a long time. Maybe when I first had the experience with my first performance coach, I always thought about it, always brainstormed with him in discussions, and the next one, the next one.
There is no chance that… I don’t want people just to think that some other team, any team, put one guy behind them, like a performance coach, and he will create a miracle. It will be different players.
A performance coach adds more direction, helping with tools, giving you 5% of something, of success. I mean, of progress and of your skills. It’s like that at the top of everything.
But if you cannot play CS, if you cannot do what you usually do, like, let’s say, last season, nobody will help you. It’s all about our mindset overall.
But versus The MongolZ we played good. It was a good mindset; today, somehow, bad. But as I said, we need to discuss with the team. Why? What happened?
NAVI decided not to make a roster change in the summer. I think a lot of people still feel like you’re lacking in individual level in this roster. You know, mistakes happen. Players are human. You’re never gonna have a game of perfect Counter-Strike where everyone plays perfectly…
Of course. Never, never. We never even aim for this. We never aim for perfect CS. We say it every day, guys. Every match, we say, we cannot play perfect CS. We will make mistakes in this game. 100%. Yeah, always. You just need to know how to react to them.
Do you feel like this roster needs something different?
For now, we just keep playing. We will keep playing the season, because we built a lot of material in bootcamp, and I think we have a good opportunity to start the season.
The first three tournaments, let’s see how it goes and what it will bring us. I think we can be a strong contender. Not for one tournament. We just need to play more official games and have good material. We just need to polish everything.
We have seven maps, so we will be a very strong contender. We just need to keep working and try harder, fixing mistakes. We will fix mistakes from today. We will improve for sure.
End of Interview
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Darragh is an Esports Journalist for Insider Gaming specialising in Counter-Strike. He loves to explore how esports teams work, or why they very often do not.
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