YEKINDAR claims NAVI\u2019s \u201cstars are aligning\u201d in time for PGL Stockholm Major success Jo\u00e3o Ferreira \/ DexertoHeroic was one comeback too far for Virtus.pro at the PGL Stockholm CS:GO Major, falling to the Danes 2-1 in the quarter-finals. It\u2019s not the result Mareks \u2018YEKINDAR\u2019 Ga\u013cinskis wanted, but he says it was never quite \u2018theirs\u2019 \u2014 the \u201cstars are aligning\u201d for CIS rivals Natus Vincere instead. Virtus.pro could not mount a Major miracle akin to their 2019 successes as Avangar in Berlin. The CIS roster have officially bowed out of the PGL Stockholm CS:GO Major in the quarter-finals, losing to Denmark\u2019s last hope Heroic 2-1. It was a tight series between the two squads. While Virtus.pro started out slow on their map pick of Heroic, with almost every play being answered with a resounding swarm, they managed to pick up the pace on Ancient with star AWper and IGL Dzhami \u2018Jame\u2019 Ali stepping up big. However, on the deciding map of Inferno, the pressure got to Virtus.pro. Big plays from YEKINDAR kept the CIS squad in it \u2014 and the faithful had hopes of a comeback like they put on in earlier matches in the Major. Virtus.pro were never really on a level playing field with the Danes, who ran away with the series 16-10, 13-16, 12-16 after the slight resistance. \u201cOverall our mood was great, our mental stability was also really great. We believed in the comeback until the very end but we lost some crucial rounds on both Mirage and Inferno,\u201d YEKINDAR told Dexerto. \u201cOn Mirage we couldn\u2019t hang onto the CT rounds. We were winning one, then losing again. We didn\u2019t have the economy and we couldn\u2019t get our stacks right. \u201cFor Heroic, we always [pushed] into their stacks and we were losing rounds because of it. Overall it was bad macro by us in the game.\u201d Virtus.pro starts building for the future with FL1T A quarter-finals exit isn\u2019t the glamorous result to hope for, but for a Virtus.pro who was integrating Evgeny \u2018FL1T\u2019 Lebedev at the last minute, they couldn\u2019t ask for much more. The Russian, formerly with forZe, jumped into the squad as a \u201ctemporary change\u201d for the benched Sanjar \u2018SANJI\u2019 Kuliev. The future of the roster remains somewhat uncertain \u2014 the team wanted to leave big decisions until after the Major. FL1T\u2019s 0.99 rating at his Major debut isn\u2019t the biggest breakout performance, but according to YEKINDAR, he did his job well. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t call him a stand-in, but I think he did great,\u201d he said. \u201cThis experience \u2014 first tournament for a team is really important with a new player, and I wish I had the same opportunity when I joined VP to play at a Major. I believed he gained a lot of knowledge about us and our playstyle and mentality and I believe we have a great future ahead of us.\u201d YEKINDAR \u2014 who topped the ratings across the event for Virtus.pro with 1.09 \u2014 called his form \u201cquite normal\u201d, neither satisfied nor annoyed. There were some concerns about Jame though, who was off his usually sharp shot at the Major. YEKINDAR brushed off though, claiming the late roster change forced the AWPer to focus more on calling rounds than hitting the insane shots we\u2019ve grown accustomed too. \u201cJame was fully focusing on calling throughout this best of three. On these types of games when you have a new player that maybe doesn\u2019t fully know what is the plan, Jame \u2014 the in-game leader \u2014 needs to focus more on the calling and helping his teammates to be on the same page,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s just for this tournament, I believe in the future it\u2019ll be a lot better.\u201d Can anyone stop NAVI? With Virtus.pro out, YEKINDAR\u2019s eyes have now drifted towards who\u2019s primed to win it all at the PGL Stockholm CS:GO Major \u2014 and it\u2019s hard to look past Natus Vincere. NAVI has won almost everything there is to win in the last two years. Since their disappointing quarter-finals exit in Berlin in 2019, they\u2019ve taken home IEM Katowice 2020, the BLAST Premier Global Final 2020, IEM Cologne 2021, and ESL Pro League Season 14. They have only finished outside the top 10 of an event once in two years, and more often than not found themselves nearing the podium. Everything is going to plan for the kings of CIS \u2014 just in time to get, what many believe, to be a well-deserved Major title for Oleksandr \u2018s1mple\u2019 Kostyliev. YEKINDAR believes NAVI are the favorites for a reason, but there\u2019s one force that can stop them, and it\u2019s the young guns at Gambit who have contested their CIS dynasty across the online era. \u201cI believe in NAVI, the stars are aligning for them at this Major, but I would say that Gambit has a chance. If they go through [the quarter-finals], the only team that can beat NAVI is Gambit,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s good that they\u2019re [meeting] in the semi-finals. I believe in finals it\u2019ll be harder for them, but in semi-finals, Gambit could have a lot of chances.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
YEKINDAR claims NAVI\u2019s \u201cstars are aligning\u201d in time for PGL Stockholm Major success Jo\u00e3o Ferreira \/ DexertoHeroic was one comeback too far for Virtus.pro at the PGL Stockholm CS:GO Major, falling to the Danes 2-1 in the quarter-finals. It\u2019s not the result Mareks \u2018YEKINDAR\u2019 Ga\u013cinskis wanted, but he says it was never quite \u2018theirs\u2019 \u2014 […]<\/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-39378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39378","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=39378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}