Russia's Cloud9 was among the teams that have already left the IEM Cologne tournament. Despite the fact that the team is currently ranked fourth in the world rankings, they finished the competition in 9th – 12th place, failing to make it out of the group stage. In its opening match against Outsiders it looked quite convincing, but then suffered crushing defeats in the next two games – against Liquid and Astralis.
In an interview that team captain Vladislav «nafany» Gorshkov gave after the end of the tournament, he noted that he should be blamed for the poor result. This is confirmed by the – stats on the six cards played by the team at the tournament, his rating was only 0.71. Nafany bluntly said that «ruined the tournament for his team».
He mentioned that there are several reasons for the team's poor performance, but if anyone is to be blamed, it is first of all himself. At the same time, the player mentioned that the problem was not only his own poor performance (for example, on Mirage in the match against Astralis his K – D score was 16 – 11), but also the fact that he didn't do a very good job as an ingame leader. Nafany concluded by thanking everyone for their support and promised that the team will return with better results next season.