As the CSGO season begins, all eyes remain on NAVI Michal Konkol\/BLASTAfter a long break, the CS:GO season is back, and many teams will debut their new rosters. What can we expect from the pretenders to NAVI\u2019s throne? With the BLAST Premier Spring Groups officially kicking off the Counter-Strike season, one topical question lingers: Can anyone take the crown from NAVI? The CIS giants were the dominant force in the scene in 2021, sweeping trophies and individual awards, and setting a new record for the most prize money won in a single calendar year. It will be hard for anyone to top what NAVI did last year, when they won all four LAN events they attended \u2013 including the Major \u2013, an Intel Grand Slam, and a handful of online competitions. There is a perfect blend of experience and youth in NAVI\u2019s team, which has an average age of 22.4 years \u2013 the joint-second-youngest in the top 10 of HLTV\u2019s world rankings at the moment. Aleksandr \u2018s1mple\u2019 Kostyliev and Denis \u2018electroNic\u2019 Sharipov have been playing at the highest level for so long that sometimes it\u2019s easy to forget that they\u2019re only 24 and 23 years old, respectively. All of NAVI\u2019s players have plenty of great years ahead of them, so there\u2019s no reason \u2013 bar an injury or a deterioration of the relationship between the players \u2013 that this formula cannot continue to bear fruit. And if for some reason things go awry, NAVI have the most efficient producer of young talent in their academy project. Success stories like those of Valerii \u2018b1t\u2019 Vakhovskyi and Ilya \u2018m0NESY\u2019 Osipov, sold to G2 Esports for a reported fee of $600,000, make everyone think that NAVI are covered for every possible scenario, that even the slightest deviation from their master plan will be dealt with swiftly and strongly. Read more: Who is m0NESY, G2 CSGO\u2019s new AWP prodigy? – The envy of all teams, NAVI enter the 2022 season a good couple of levels above everyone else. There were a handful of power moves in the offseason in an attempt to knock NAVI off the perch this year. But will anyone succeed? The heavy hitters The new season will begin not with an arena or a studio event, but with an online tournament. It\u2019s a less-than-perfect scenario, given the thrills and excitement that fans and players experienced in the second half of 2021 for the first time in what felt like forever. But for the new teams \u2013 and there are many of them -, this can actually work in their favor as they will have the chance to shake off the rust in a lower pressure environment before the stakes get higher. On paper, FaZe are probably the biggest threat to NAVI at the moment. Robin \u2018ropz\u2019 Kool offers a huge firepower upgrade over Olof \u2018olofmeister\u2019 Kajbjer and the ability to seamlessly plug-and-play right away. Finn \u2018karrigan\u2019 Andersen has already worked with the Estonian star in the past and knows how to get the best out of him \u2013 something that could set FaZe apart from teams like G2 and Vitality at this early stage. It could be that Vitality will take a while to find their rhythm as it is not easy to get everything harmonized after going through such radical changes. Their ceiling is now much higher with the additions of Major-winning talent in Peter \u2018dupreeh\u2019 Rasmussen, Emil \u2018Magisk\u2019 Reif, and head coach Danny \u2018zonic\u2019 S\u00f8rensen, but it\u2019s impossible not to feel that this tournament will come too soon for them. G2 have their own issues to address, most importantly the weight of responsibility on m0NESY\u2019s shoulders. At just 16, the Russian AWPer is still very much wet behind the ears and has never played at this level, yet he is now expected to be a difference-maker in a team that has been designed with one purpose: Win a Major. Discover more: S1mple: \u201cAfter CSGO? Maybe VALORANT!\u201d | 20 Questions – Luckily for m0NESY, he won\u2019t need to hit s1mple-esque levels right off the bat, provided that Nikola \u2018NiKo\u2019 Kova\u010d continues to put up stellar numbers. For now, the Russian youngster can simply be an upgrade over Fran\u00e7ois \u2018AMANEK\u2019 Delaunay and a reliable AWPer who can unlock defenses and hold down bombsites on his own. With Aleksi \u2018Aleksib\u2019 Virolainen having only recently joined the team and R\u00e9my \u2018XTQZZZ\u2019 Quoniam still getting to grips with the job and the task of communicating with his troops in English, G2 might look a bit rough around the edges in the first few tournaments. Question marks and sentimentality The Nordic duo of NIP and Astralis both head into the BLAST event with dark clouds hanging over their heads, albeit for very different reasons. The Ninjas will play their second full tournament without Nicolai \u2018device\u2019 Reedtz \u2013 who remains sidelined for an unknown period of time -, with academy player Love \u2018phzy\u2019 Smidebrant filling in for the Dane. 2021 was already a rough year for the Ninjas, and without \u2018Mr. Consistency\u2019 to bail them out, it\u2019s hard to see them having the firepower to go toe-to-toe with the big boys. And Astralis, after a promising first tournament with Kristian \u2018k0nfig\u2019 Wienecke and Benjamin \u2018blameF\u2019 Bremer, have been nothing short of underwhelming. They wrapped up 2021 with a 9th-12th place at IEM Winter and a 5th-6th place at the BLAST Premier World Final, and began 2022 with a 5th-6th place in the Funspark ULTI 2021 Finals. It has proven difficult for Lukas \u2018gla1ve\u2019 Rossander to get the best out of his pieces, and if the slump continues, the clock will be ticking on Philip \u2018Lucky\u2019 Ewald, who is seemingly back to AWPing duties. The lack of clarity about the roles in the team and the handling of the AWP like it\u2019s a hot potato raise some serious concerns about their prospects of success. And then there are the North American teams. The region took quite the beating in 2020 and 2021 with an exodus of talent and organizations amid the rise of Valorant and the global health crisis. Things seem to be on the up again, in part because of the support pledged by the Louvre Agreement teams, but some of the region\u2019s offseason moves made were fuelled by nostalgia and longing. The worst offender was EG, who decided to bring back the core of Cloud9\u2019s Boston Major-winning lineup, made up of Jake \u2018Stewie2K\u2019 Yip, William \u2018RUSH\u2019 Wierzba, and Timothy \u2018autimatic\u2019 Ta. It seems nigh impossible to see three players in the autumn of their careers, and who couldn\u2019t keep the Cloud9 team functioning four years ago after the region\u2019s biggest achievement, suddenly deliver success to a team whose star players, Vincent \u2018Brehze\u2019 Cayonte and Tsvetelin \u2018CeRq\u2019 Dimitrov, are going through a slump. Liquid brought back a familiar face in Nick \u2018nitr0\u2019 Cannella, who, like autimatic, is returning to CS:GO after a Valorant stint, in the hopes that he can once again guide the team to the top. It is a move that evokes memories of better times, but can \u2018Captain America\u2019 get up to speed quickly enough to avoid a poor start to the year? And can Josh \u2018oSee\u2019 Ohm live up to the hype after years farming stats in North America? Much to everyone\u2019s surprise, it was Complexity who lucked out. After watching the team fail to qualify for the Major, the organization decided it was time to wipe the slate clean and pulled the plug on the \u2018Juggernaut\u2019 project. They now have a well-rounded, NA-based squad with the core of the Extra Salt team plus Paytyn \u2018junior\u2019 Johnson and Michael \u2018Grim\u2019 Wince, two players eager to prove themselves after a bittersweet year. They are one of the potential dark horses for the BLAST tournament along with BIG, who strengthened their team with Josef \u2018faveN\u2019 Baumann but may still be one roster move away from being an elite contender. Getting the new season underway It\u2019s quite likely that we won\u2019t be seeing a NAVI team at full strength in the BLAST Premier Spring Groups. They ended the 2021 season running on fumes, showing clear signs of fatigue after a long and demanding year. At the BLAST Premier World Final, they began their campaign with a defeat to a \u2018dead\u2019 Team Liquid before, and while they went on to win the tournament, it was not as clear cut as some of their other title runs. NAVI can afford to approach this test with a more relaxed attitude given the nature of the tournament, which basically serves as a qualifier for the Spring Finals, and the fact that it won\u2019t be held on LAN, where their true strength lies. With no trophy at stake, they might want to save their strength and focus for IEM Katowice, the first real challenge of 2022, safe in the knowledge that even their B-game will be enough to get the job done. The buzz that comes with the start of a new season is back. There will be no great conclusions drawn from this tournament, no accurate measurements of where each team stands, and even though Counter-Strike might not always be of the highest quality, the excitement is guaranteed. After a busy offseason that restored some semblance of normality, it is clear that some teams want to do more than just make up the numbers and play second fiddle to NAVI. But some of the moves still provide more questions than answers. For all we know, this is still NAVI\u2019s world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the CSGO season begins, all eyes remain on NAVI Michal Konkol\/BLASTAfter a long break, the CS:GO season is back, and many teams will debut their new rosters. What can we expect from the pretenders to NAVI\u2019s throne? With the BLAST Premier Spring Groups officially kicking off the Counter-Strike season, one topical question lingers: Can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37305\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}