NAVI are number one - The start of a new era?

With their recent success at the BLAST Premier Spring Groups 2021 event, NAVI have catapulted themselves into the number one spot. They currently rank as the world's best team according to the official HLTV rankings. Behind them are, former number one, Astralis at second, and at third place the French Vitality. By beating FaZe in the Group Final, and thereby winning their group, they made sure that everybody knows that NAVI is a force to be reckoned with in this season of Counter-Strike.

NAVI are currently on a winning streak of eight wins in a row, beating giants such as FaZe, Astralis, and Vitality along the way. With Aleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev and Denis "electronic" Sharipov showing exactly why they are considered to be some of the world's best players, it isn't a surprise that NAVI are doing as well as they currently are.

However, it isn't only the two star-players who have prevailed in the past months, also the new addition in 18-year-old Valeriy "B1T" Vakhovskiy has proven his critics wrong and performed extremely well. He is currently the single professional Counter-Strike player with the highest headshot percentage, ranking in at 71.4% in matches in the past three months.

Whilst NAVI is looking like an impossible task to overcome at this moment in time, the true test will come at IEM Katowice. Will it be Astralis, NAVI, or perhaps Vitality to reign supreme and take home the trophy? If NAVI wins the entire tournament an argument could very well be made that we are entering a new era, one defined by the giants of Natus Vincere.