From winning eight top-tier tournaments, including a Major, in the span of 12 months and ruling the entire CS:GO scene to now being a struggling squad placed outside of the elite teams.
That’s the cruel fate of Natus Vincere.
CS:GO caster and analyst Alex “Mauisnake” Ellenberg has given his perception of the entire situation around NAVI and why he believes they are struggling at the moment. Something he did in a fresh episode of “Snake & Banter” alongside Duncan “Thorin” Shields and fellow content creator kingT.
– The NAVI situation is concerning for me, Mauisnake starts off.
– I’m not sure about this at all but basically everything I’m reading from them is – and this is speculation just to make it clear – that NAVI basically are pushing b1ad3 to only use Ukrainian players and only look and scout for Ukrainian players. And I think that’s why this project with npl and sdy is lasting so long. I think if they had the option to look for Russian players, this team would be top 3 in the world, for sure.
NAVI CEO: We’re not going to work with people who live and pay taxes in Russia
Picking the wrong talent
– That’s what I’m suspecting based on the message I’m getting. Again it’s not confirmed, but it does just seems like that. I think b1ad3 is doing what he can. If NAVI wanted to do better and not try to make more money they should probably just have taken headtr1ck and made him a rifler. Because he was a rifler for NAVI Junior when m0NESY were on the team with him, and he was good. So I don’t know why they didn’t just keep him. Maybe the Ninja (NIP) sellout was good enough to buy out.
s1mple out of Top 3
Mauisnake explains further how all these things could mean that Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev will end outside of top 3 on HLTV’s annual ‘Player of the Year’ award for the first time since 2017.
– That’s kind of why I also made that take on our ‘Hot Take Point” show that s1mple’s not going to be top 3 this year. Because there’s too much turmoil around this team and way too much going on that’s going to affect him and make NAVI not finish as high in tournaments as they probably should.
You can watch the entire episode of “Snake & Banter” in the video down below.
