It takes a certain kind of confidence in your own ability to handwave a question about your own legacy potentially being tarnished by "only" winning one Major.
The sort of confidence one can only achieve by already having won a Major.
s1mple calmly told BLAST.tv that he "doesn't think it matters how many Majors [he] gets before Global Offensive finishes", which is a lot easier to say when you have one to fall back on.
"I still feel like I did a lot for this game and the Majors that I lost were really hard to win against SK, Luminosity and Astralis because they were really top teams. Every team I lost a Major to had an era."
It's difficult to argue against; s1mple's mark on the game will be as big as any of the greats. Though he might not have been a founding father of the game, it's nigh-on impossible to conceive a Mount Rushmore without the Undertaker's face on it.
That sort of unerring aloofness extends to questions about his potential status as the 'GOAT', in which s1mple maintains that he doesn't know or care, and that "people decide" on his standing, not him.
"I just want to play really good in the next game (CS2) since I am only 25 so I don't like to think GOAT or legend or whatever. It's just useless things because I know that I can still do the same numbers as 2018, 2021, 2022. Everything depends on the team for me."
NAVI come in to Paris in the same pocket they normally exist in; not the favourites, but always in the conversation. Though the last few years did see a break from that, for large parts of CSGO that has been the case.
But this time, there are more questions about exactly who is the best team in the world - a fact s1mple is aware of.
"I feel like every day can be a different game. I feel there is a lot of favourites or that there is no favourites because everyone can win this Major, like at the last one in Rio."
He believes that the reason NAVI don't come in as favourites, and the reason for their slower start to 2023, was "because we changed players".
"We need to get better with new players and that's it. Other teams like Heroic and G2 didn't make any changes and Vitality so that's it. As much as you play with your 5 players, you have an advantage because you went through a lot with those players."
One of those players who s1mple refers to is npl, who came up through the NAVI academy system and has gone from strength to strength.
He was criticised early on, and s1mple acknowledges that he was making mistakes in the past, but found some time to dish out praise to the youngster.
"He is developing good. He is still studying a lot of small details but those details are really important in game so we are just working and working with him. He is doing less mistakes than before."
He, like any mentor, tempers the praise with a dash of feedback.
"I think he needs to work to be smarter in game. He should analyse more opponents then he will become a much better player."
That's easy to say when you're one of the smartest to ever touch the game, of course.
s1mple spoke about how good GamerLegion played in the Challengers Stage, though he did so in a way that made it clear he wasn't all that scared of them either.
Not that he'd be scared of anyone, mind you.
Though he feels it makes no difference to his legacy, s1mple will be desperate to pick up a second Major - and his methods for trying to achieve it are devilishly simple.
"We just need to find our game to win the whole tournament because we had really nice preparation and really nice bootcamp, but we still need to play even better during the official tournament so we just want to get our form back."
When you're the greatest to ever play the game, suddenly the idea of just playing your own game becomes less of a platitude and more of a threat.
And when NAVI win their opening game of the event, you know they mean business.
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