nitr0 says practice is "worst it's ever been" in NA at the moment ahead of Major

Nick "nitr0" Cannella and NRG had a reality check ahead of the BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025 as they were among the four teams that finished last place in IEM Dallas 2025 last week.

But, turns out that losing at IEM Dallas showed NRG what they needed to do for the Major. According to nitr0's recent interview to BLAST, this is because the quality of practice in North America has been terrible.

Obviously, all the European teams are in Europe, a lot of the Brazilian teams are in Brazil because of qualifiers, so, we've been stuck practicing the same teams in NA, and we don't really get tested that much here.

As you could see in Dallas, this makes it really hard for us. We played two top ten teams, with Falcons probably being the second best in the world right now arguably, so it was really hard for us.

The one silver lining, though, is that it really showed us what we need to work on for the Major. In a way, it was really nice for us to get beat because we just don't really get beaten that much in NA, especially in scrims. So, we're trying to look at it in more of an optimistic light, I guess.

Based on what NRG went through, the only solution nitr0 sees in the short term is traveling to Europe and bootcamp more often. This is something they're planning to do after the BLAST.tv Austin Major.

Practice in NA was better before the scene became too Eurocentric at the start of the decade. Brazilian teams, for example, started to travel to Europe and bootcamp there, as most tournaments are played on the Old Continent anyway.

The departure of Brazilian teams left a void in terms of practice for top NA teams like NRG, according to what nitr0 told BLAST.

The only team that we scrim against and play in a league against is Legacy, I think they're in Texas some parts of the year, besides when they need to be in Brazil for qualifiers. It's honestly pretty bad, I think in NA it's probably the worst it's ever been to have solid practice in the last couple of years.

The only consistent league is ECL, and obviously, a lot of the teams in ECL aren't even getting paid to play. There's a few teams overall that are getting paid, so it's really hard to find consistent practice throughout the whole day. Some days we can only find two decent scrims, other days we might get a BO3 against Complexity if they're in the country, or maybe even M80 or Legacy.

It's really hard to feel like you're being as productive as possible. Obviously, we would love to be in Europe and be able to bootcamp more, but the opportunity isn't presented to go there because we have to play so many matches domestically.

Right now, we're going to take a look at our schedule for the rest of the year and try to figure out what makes the most sense to try and get more EU bootcamps and more efficient practice to become a better team overall.

NRG will have the chance to do better at the Major than they did in IEM Dallas. They start the tournament in Stage 1, which doesn't feature any of the top 10 teams in the world.

nitr0 and co. will play TYLOO in the opening round of the BLAST.tv Austin Major.