Boombl4: "First we need to make playoffs and gain experience; by the end of next season, we can start putting up a worthy fight"

Boombl4 deemed a run to the playoffs "an acceptable result" despite a landslide loss to FaZe in the quarter-finals.

HLTV spoke to Kirill "⁠Boombl4⁠" Mikhailov after BetBoom bowed out of XSE Pro League in the quarter-finals off the back of a landslide loss to FaZe.

The captain discussed the difficult match, which followed a straightforward group stage in which BetBoom went 3-0, saying the change of map pool and a five-day break before the playoffs played a part.

"It was very hard to readjust to this map pool for the tournament," Boombl4 said. We also didn't have many practice days with S1ren to refresh the core maps. That ended up costing us."

Boombl4 conceded it's an "acceptable result" to make it to the playoffs nonetheless. "The team's task right now is to hold the position we're in, try to climb higher, and for now start consistently reaching the playoffs, to gain experience so we can eventually win in those playoffs," he said.

You can read the whole interview, in which Boombl4 also shared no changes had been planned at the end of the last season until multiple players on BetBoom ran into visa issues, below:

Note: This interview was originally conducted in Russian.

A quarter-final loss at XSE. What went wrong in this match?

Overall you could say they added Cache to the map pool, and it was very hard to readjust to this whole map pool for the tournament. We played the Major with the stand-in so we got a bit exhausted. We also didn't have many practice days with S1ren to refresh the core maps. That ended up costing us.

After the first map at 13-2, I can't say it was really hard to regroup, but I think they smelled blood and didn't let go of the match. And for us it ended badly.

But you did play well in the group stage. Could it be that the five-day break knocked you off, interrupted your momentum somehow?

100% yes. We're in the Asian region, and things are very tough here in terms of praccs and the level of the teams overall. It's hard to even find timely scrims on some of the maps you need. Plus, of course, those five days had an effect, because you don't understand what state you're in. Scrims are different from official matches.

And even though FaZe were in the same situation, but they played two matches more, given the 3-2 score. But I think that pause could have affected them negatively too. Every team has to adjust to it, so I can't say that's specifically what caused the loss. But I think it affects all teams.

In light of how strong your result at the Major was, is a quarterfinal here an acceptable result for you, or a disappointment?

I think it's an acceptable result. After the Major I said that at every tournament — well, it's hard to call this one a full tournament, since there are no real top teams here — the minimum objective is making the playoffs.

And I'll repeat what I said in interviews after the Major: the team's task right now is to hold the position we're in, try to climb higher, and for now start consistently reaching the playoffs, to gain experience so we can eventually win in those playoffs.

FL4MUS didn't continue playing with the team after the Major run. How do you reflect on it turning out like this?

I can say that no changes were planned. Unfortunately, situations just came up where we couldn't play with the roster, and right up until the end we didn't fully understand which lineup we'd be competing with. I'll say that our team form at this tournament was quite good, we showed good results in scrims. The structure we were building, the maps we studied, all of that produced good results in scrims. Obviously that's only scrims, but I could feel that the team form was there.

It's also as if we played the whole season with various stand-ins. There's no d1Ledez here, there's no S1ren there. And honestly, it's hard to even assess any kind of ceiling or progress for this roster, because one month you play with one lineup, the next month another, then you show up to a tournament with a third. You could say this tournament was finally one where we arrived with a full roster.

But then again, we came to it right after playing for a month with FL4MUS. And on top of spending a lot of energy, morally too, and not expecting that kind of result ourselves, that took its toll. Plus, again, not much time to prepare. So I hope, and think, that next season we'll manage to attend more often with the main roster, and then we'll see what results we show and what to do next.

It often happens that a team that plays with a stand-in or comes in with a new roster plays better due to having less pressure to perform. Could it be that the pressure is the big problem for your team?

I'd say it was a problem that followed us last year. This year, I'd say the [lack of] pressure thing 100% decided the fate of our run at the Major, because you play with a stand-in and just enjoy the fact that you're at the Major, and you try to go as far as possible. But if we're talking specifically about this tournament, the loss here definitely wasn't due to pressure. So I don't think it's such a pressing issue right now. It's possible we have it, but again, we haven't played enough tournaments with this roster to really feel it.

So I'd say it's a problem we noticed last year, and we worked on it. A new coach came in, added a lot of structure, and there's at least a sense of progress. Not even about the tournament result, but about the training process, how everything goes, how the players start grasping certain things, our results, our understanding of the game. All of that is growing.

Plus the experience, because even though we ran into this, I think it was an excellent experience for Magnojez and d1Ledez who had their first Major playoffs. The players are gaining experience, structure gets built up, there's progress, a new coach, we're growing as a collective, and the progress is clearly visible despite this whole situation. So we hope, as I said, that next season we'll play more often with the main roster and see where that takes us.

Besides attending more LANs with the main roster, what are your goals and plans for next season?

Well, to lock ourselves in at the level we want. I think holding a top-16 spot, so we qualify for all the top tournaments and get there with our own roster. And to start, I think it would be good to just reach the playoff stage at every tournament.

Even next season, if we go to two or three tier-S tournaments and lose in the first playoff match, that's experience. So first we need to make the playoffs and gain experience, and then by the end of next season, if all goes well, we can start counting on top placements, reaching the semifinals more often and putting up a worthy fight there.