Team Information:
In October 2020, the professional CS: GO team Natus Vincere will celebrate its next birthday. This is a great opportunity to remember the success story of a great team. In 2009, the United Arab Emirates is the scene.
Creature
By 2009, it was clear that CS was not just a fun pastime. Serious sums were appearing in the ongoing tournaments. The games attracted a large number of spectators, and investors focused on promising e-sports organizations.
Betting companies became more active. CS games appeared in the betting line. In parallel, the number of competitions increased. One of the first to believe in the prospects of e-sports was a businessman and a public figure from the Republic of Kazakhstan, Murat “Arbalet” Zhumashevich.
He participated in the Dubai International Tournament as one of the organizers. There, on the sidelines, Arbalet announced his desire to create and support an esports organization. He covered all the costs of helping the team prepare for and participate in tournaments.
Murat offered to pay salaries to the team’s cyber athletes so they would not be distracted in search of revenue. The first to believe in the crossbow was Sergey “starix” Ischuk from Kiev. After Sergey agreed to cooperate, he began to recruit a team.
Negotiations with the players lasted two months. On December 18, 2009, the creation of a new team was solemnly announced. It was given the sonorous name NaVi. Originally, the name of the team was called that. The creators said that their decision on the name was influenced by James Cameron’s movie “Avatar”. That was the name of the alien tribe.
A contest was then held for the best transcript of the NaVi abbreviation. The winner was the variant referring to the Latin spelling of the motto: “Born to Win” (Natus Vincere).
NaVi’s first roster
The following players responded to Sergey’s invitation:
Egor “Markeloff” Markelov;
Ivan “Edward” Sukharev;
Arseniy “Esenin” Trynozhenko;
Daniil “Zeus” Teslenko.
Together with “starix” they became NaVi’s first legendary CS squad.
First tournaments
In 2010, the first Arbalet Cup CIS tournament was held. His team was unsuccessful. I even had to take a break and skip ASUS Winter 2010 to train hard. The result was the victory in the qualification of the Ukrainian ESWC. Then the new team reached the final of the competition in Stockholm, took second place and the guys got the first prize – 10 thousand dollars.
Since NaVi qualified for the ESWC Main Event for the first time, the preparation lasted almost two months. Seriously worked on team interaction. Hard work in training paid off – the team won the first victory in the prestigious world championship. On two maps (Train and Inferno) serious opponent, SK Gaming, was defeated in the final.
In 2010 NaVi won two more tournaments: the Bilbao GameGune and the Summer Arbalet Cup in Dallas. In 2010, the team took first place in the unofficial competition for prize money earned per – Season . The ZeroGravity team manager was very pleased with the team’s commitment and high earnings.
The team’s victories did not end there. In October, they won the third World Cyber Games tournament and became the first team to win three CS titles simultaneously (IEM, ESWC, WCG).
Ended a successful year for NaVi with a breakthrough in LAN competition in Sweden. The Winter DreamHack was held there. The team won a convincing victory, losing only one map in all battles – “Mirage”.
The team triumph also crowned the personal success of one of the team’s founders. Sergey “starix” Ischuk was named the most useful player of the tournament. This victory allowed the Ukrainians to prevail in terms of prize money earned per year – 220,000 dollars.
Results of 2010:
twelve medals (eight gold);
a huge army of fans;
Leadership in prize money.
Fall from Olympus and change of composition
The total dominance of the first NaVi roster lasted two years. The guys believed in themselves so much that they switched to the new version of CS: GO without hesitation. It turned out to be very bad. The team had a fever, the results deteriorated. Failure followed failure in tournaments.
The leadership endured the “golden composition” until the end. 15 months were the blackest since the band was founded. The consequences of mistakes were conflicts between players. Finally, players left the team because there was no prospect of relations.
Egor “Markeloff” Markelov was lured away by another club, Arseniy “ceh9” Trinozhenko moved to commentators. They were replaced by Denis “seized” Kostin (rifle and awp) and Ladislav “GuardiaN” Kovacs (sniper).
Unfortunately, the quality of the game did not change much. The general manager had to make a very difficult decision – the very first player, Sergey Starix Ischuk, did not draw anymore. The team needed new, young blood.
Sergei took over the role of player-coach and the promising Yegor “Flamie” Vasiliev was invited to join the team. “Flamie” had his first fight on March 17, 2015. Egor is still the main actor of the team. As of October 2020, he has 724 fights (433 wins – 60 percent).
Transfers and rotation of the roster
NaVi has been lucky since 2015. The lineup was played and in April it won the ESL Pro League. It seemed that the renowned team was back and ready to fight for the big prizes of prestigious stocks.
The fans were happy to see the powerful and beautiful play of the team. The guys played some cards and stuck to spectacular and aggressive tactics. All this was accompanied by interesting individual decisions of the players.
The lineup was stable and occupied the second line in the HLTV.org world ranking for some time.
2016 was a mixed year in the team’s history. The start was confident – DreamHack Leipzig submitted in the spring. Then there was a drop in play and a drop in results. The decision of the management was expected. Young talent Alexander “s1mple” Kostylev was to replace Zeus, who had lost a lot. “
The transition definitely worked – in December NaVi won the ESL One: New York title in a tough fight. The creator of the success was Kostylev, who was awarded the MVP of the competition.
All the experts predicted a crazy start for the team. However, it turned out that this was the only tournament won. The year 2017 passed without much success, which dealt a serious blow to the ambitions of such a serious organization as NaVi.
Return
Teslenko showed good results after leaving NaVi. As a keeper of the winning traditions, he was persuaded to return to the role of team captain. The fans gladly accepted the return of the leader to his home club.
Zeus alone could not reverse the unfortunate trend. Other replacements were needed. Denis “seized” Kostin decided to leave the club. Denis “electronic” Sharipov was hastily invited to take his place.
The next permutations produced results. NaVi twice made it to the finals of major tournaments, where the invincible Astralis at the time blocked the way to victory.
In 2019, the “veteran” Ivan “Edward” Sukharev left the team. He was replaced by Kirill “Boombl4” Mikhailov (Bumych). Teslenko tried to convince Boombl4 for a long time, seeing him as his replacement.
And so it happened. Now the captain of Boombl4, showing the ability to perfectly manage the team and smooth out corners in conflict situations.
Scandal
In September 2020, a major scandal broke out. Investigations by a special commission revealed that coach NaVi: The Legend “starix” and his partner Andi used a camera bug in 2017. Investigations revealed that trainers used cameras in at least two fights.
The former mentors did not deny the violation and fully admitted their guilt. The club officially apologized to all interested parties and fans.
This scandal did not affect the reputation and morale of the club. “Born to Win” can not be easily broken, said Boombl4 in preparation for the next online tournament.
CS:GO
CS:GO Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO for short) is a computer game from the genre of online tactical shooters. It was developed by Valve and Hidden Path Entertainment and is the fourth part of the Counter-Strike series. The game was released on August 21, 2012 for Windows, Linux, macOS, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. A release for the PlayStation 3 in Europe failed to materialize for unknown reasons. Global Offensive achieved a Metascore of 83 points. Since September 14, 2017, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has also been available in China via the Perfect World client. In December 2018, the game was switched to a free-to-play model, which drew criticism.