B1ad3: "We're ready to let nipl play Vertigo at BLAST Premier Fall Final 2022"

NAVI Junior's Andrii "nipl" Kukharskyi is now with the main Natus Vincere roster in Copenhagen at BLAST Premier Fall Final 2022, where he might make his debut under certain conditions, the team's coach, Andrey "B1ad3" Gorodenskiy, said in an interview with the club's YouTube channel.

According to the specialist, nipl may get a chance to play Vertigo if NAVI, during the big BLAST event, face an opponent whose Vertigo is not among the strongest picks.

Yes, we brought nipl over for him to feel the atmosphere, hang out with the team and watch them practice. Besides, he's our stand-in, and if someone can't play, he will replace that player. Which is a good thing. It happened to us at BLAST in August when Sasha couldn't play and headtr1ck stood in for him. Yes, headt1ck stood in a lot of times for us. Someone might get sick, we don't know, so nipl could play here. We're ready to let him play Vertigo at this tournament because's he's good on this map. Even without practice. However, not many teams would play Vertigo against us. I mean, not many teams we could play Vertigo against because it's their strong map, while we would play it against those who have it as their 7th map. For example, FaZe. Having analyzed the veto, we might think about leaving Vertigo in the pool if we play against FaZe. It's possible we might let them pick it. I mean, why not, if we start on the defense? So he might have his chance at this tournament.

B1ad3 added that the member of the club's academy team would have been brought in regardless of NAVI's results at the last Major.

Tell you what, even if we won the Major, it would be beneficial for us to do that. It's not only about our results as we have to think about developing our organization and the game overall. If we have an academy, they need to be given a chance to play. Even if we won the Rio Major, I would totally be okay with an academy player playing for us even and gaining experience. Besides, we can see what potential he's got and what needs to be done going forward. That's really important actually. In our case, we had a bad result so that's all the more reason to do that. We need to take a look at our roster from different perspectives and we'll also have some healthy competition for the other players. Like b1t, who was through that back when flamie was around and was competing for a spot. We're giving nipl a chance to compete with sdy and Vitya will get a shot to prove himself. For the other players too. If they play poorly, underperform and don't do their best, they might get replaced on a given map.

Earlier, NAVI's skipper stated that nipl would definitely get a chance to play at BLAST Premier World Final 2022. BLAST's final tournament of the year will play out on December 14-18 in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE.

Origin: youtu.be