NAVI team leader Alexander "s1mple" Kostylev gave an interview to the HLTV portal, in which he talked about how the team is preparing for tournaments, and added his opinion about the recent scandal with Akuma’s performance.
Speaking about training before the BLAST Premier Spring Final, s1mple noted that all Natus Vincere participants were actively preparing for the game on Ancient and were looking forward to the opportunity to test this map in action for the first time in an official match. Discussing the reasons why the team has been showing unstable results lately, the e-sportsman made several assumptions.
He believes that it can be more difficult for them to play against teams from the CIS because they know Natus Vincere's playing style better than representatives of other regions, and can deliberately train with this in mind. In addition, NAVI recently did not have enough time to prepare due to the fact that the competitions took place almost consecutively, one after another. In addition, when training takes place mainly online, it is more difficult for players to concentrate on the tasks at hand.
Commenting on the accusations against Akuma, s1mple said that he would not like to believe these allegations. He believes that cheating at competitions of this level – showing extreme disrespect towards the rest of the teams and so it would be sad if it turned out to be true. S1mple does not exclude that one of the participants could receive additional information using the GOTV broadcast without delay, but admits that other Akuma players could simply not be aware of the actions of the violators.
