S1mple dismisses NAVI era talk: \u201cFive months is not a long time\u201d Jo\u00e3o Ferreira\/DexertoNAVI star Aleksandr \u2018s1mple\u2019 Kostyliev has rejected the notion that his team have started their own era after winning PGL Major Stockholm. NAVI and s1mple finally broke their Major duck earlier in November following a flawless run in Stockholm, further cementing their position as the best team in the world. The CIS side have been at the top of HLTV\u2019s world rankings since July 19 and won their last three international events, two of which held on LAN. In September, they also became only the third team in history to complete the $1 million Intel Grand Slam, joining Astralis and Liquid in achieving the feat. But despite NAVI\u2019s stranglehold on titles in 2021, s1mple believes that his team are still a long way from establishing their own era, pointing to Astralis\u2019 success in 2018 and 2019 as the standard they need to be chasing. \u201cIf you compare it to Astralis, we need to stay at the top for at least three, four, five months more to start a strong era like Astralis did,\u201d NAVI told reporters at a media round table. \u201cThey won a lot of tournaments. \u201cWe have been top 1 in the world for the last five months in HLTV\u2019s ranking, but I want more. Five months is not a long period, if you compare it to Astralis.\u201d Biggest rivals NAVI will have the chance to add to their trophy case this week as they will be attending the BLAST Premier Fall Final, where the Major losing finalists, G2 Esports, and Gambit are the most notable absentees. Heroic captain Casper \u2018cadiaN\u2019 M\u00f8ller recently told Dexerto that he believes his team to be the only one capable of beating NAVI, alluding to the recent history of close matches between the two teams. S1mple, for his part, sees other teams above Heroic in the pecking order. \u201cIt\u2019s not true,\u201d s1mple said when asked about cadiaN\u2019s remarks. \u201cWe\u2019ve had harder games against Vitality and G2 than Heroic. \u201cTheir advantage is that they have a similar map pool [to ours]. Our strongest maps are their strongest maps as well. We have won 18 Nukes in a row and some of those games have been very close. Their Nuke is good as well, maybe that\u2019s why they think this. \u201cIn terms of individual skill, it\u2019s much harder to play against Gambit. Or for example, Vitality.\u201d The CIS derby between NAVI and Gambit at the Major fell short of expectations as s1mple\u2019s team ran out comfortable 2-0 winners, dropping only 11 rounds throughout the series. It was such a resounding victory that it seemed like a match between two teams from different levels. However, s1mple still sees Gambit as NAVI\u2019s biggest threat. \u201cI\u2019d still say Gambit,\u201d s1mple said when asked about NAVI\u2019s main competitor. \u201cThey didn\u2019t play their own game at the Major. We just played our best game and destroyed them mentally. \u201cIf they get more experience in front of a crowd \u2013 they\u2019re young \u2013 they\u2019ll be even better. If they don\u2019t change any players, that is. And NIP as well, I think they can play better. I expected them to be in the Major final, but they lost to G2 in the quarter-finals.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
S1mple dismisses NAVI era talk: \u201cFive months is not a long time\u201d Jo\u00e3o Ferreira\/DexertoNAVI star Aleksandr \u2018s1mple\u2019 Kostyliev has rejected the notion that his team have started their own era after winning PGL Major Stockholm. NAVI and s1mple finally broke their Major duck earlier in November following a flawless run in Stockholm, further cementing their […]<\/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-38892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38892","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=38892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38892\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}