In the opening round of BLAST Open Porto, NAVI suffered an upset loss to M80, sinking even further after bowing out in the Round of 16 at the EWC to start the season. After the match, iM was blunt in an interview with HLTV: "fxxk, that was my first reaction." He said they were well prepared but their execution of the details fell apart, while also addressing rumors that B1ad3 nearly made a roster change during the offseason: "We all knew about it, we've discussed it many times, but I don't think it will affect us."
NAVI suffered an upset loss to M80 in the opening round of BLAST Open Porto, making a difficult start to the new season even worse. After the match, iM made no secret of his disappointment in an interview with HLTV.
Q: After finishing this series, what was the first thing that came to your mind?
iM: fxxk, that was my first reaction. We roughly knew which maps we were going to play, Anubis was a bit unexpected, but it's fine, we won. And then afterwards... I don't know.
Q: You've had a slow start to the season. You decided to skip the first tournament of the season to focus on training — looking back now, was that decision worth it? Or did playing fewer official matches actually make the slow start worse?
iM: I don't think so. But after losing at EWC we also discussed it, we do need to play more official matches. Against Legacy that day we didn't play our game at all — in practice we would win those same situations, but official matches are a different story.
Today I feel like we were quite well prepared, we won the first map, and we knew how to play Mirage and what the plan was. But for some reason we just couldn't execute it, some small details went wrong, someone missed something, a wrong decision was made at a certain moment. We also lost a pistol round, which definitely didn't help. Overall, we need confidence — although it's a bit embarrassing to say that now, but in the lower bracket we can only do our best.
Q: Do you think it's a technical issue or a mindset issue?
iM: Probably a bit of both. Mentality-wise, what's the difference between Anubis and Mirage? Or between Anubis and Inferno? Maybe after winning the first map we underestimated them a bit, and then we just couldn't come back. Some players tilted after a few rough rounds, and I got pretty frustrated on Mirage myself because of some timing issues. Tactically, we at least knew Mirage and Inferno would be in the map pool, but we couldn't make anything work.
Q: B1ad3 said at EWC that NAVI almost made roster changes during the off-season. When you hear the coach say something like that, does it affect the players?
iM: No. I already talked about this topic in my EWC interview, we all know about it and we've discussed it many times. They decided to keep the same roster for this season and see how it goes afterwards. That's it, there's nothing more to say. I don't think it has much impact on us. If someone thinks they're going to get kicked and plays differently because of that, that won't happen. The two things are unrelated.
Q: Considering the slow start to the season plus today's loss, is bouncing back from the losers' bracket especially important now?
iM: Yes, the comeback is important. We need VRS points because we're dropping — we lost to Legacy and lost to M80. Confidence is also important, we need to fight back to regain confidence, not just for this BLAST, but also for the matches ahead.