Photo: navi.gg
The first major CS:GO tournament of the new year, BLAST Premier Global Final, ended up last weekend. The CIS squad, NAVI, has become a newly-crowned champion!
Last Sunday featured a really thrilling and tense fight (NAVI vs. Astralis) between the two strongest contestants ranked among the top three teams in CS:GO, with Astralis taking the first position. The Grand Final started with strained combat on the first map: Astralis held up well, making their opponents sweat, and won 12 rounds from them. A bit later, Natus Vincere began to overcome the resistance of the opponent and finally scratched out a 16:12 win on the first map. As to the second map, the CIS squad’s success was rather foreseeable there. Natus Vincere easily clinched a victory with a 16:5 score on Inferno and attained the title of champion! The victor gained a major part of the prize pool — $600,000, and a runner-up took home $200,000. The overall prize fund amounted to $1,000,000 and was distributed as follows:
It is noteworthy that NAVI’s way to victory was through the Lower Bracket, where they dropped down after a bitter loss to Team Liquid. But getting through the Lower Bracket, the future champion was smashing the opponents one by one: Complexity (2:1), G2 Esports (2:0), Team Vitality (2:1), and took revenge upon Team Liquid (2:0). Astralis, in their turn, were performing strongly, beating all the opponents in the Upper Bracket.
Although NAVI could not beat such world’s top team as Astralis in the finals for five years (the last victory dates back to 2016), this victory turned out to be very easy for them. The question of Astralis’ weak resistance remains unclear. Maybe, having been considered the world’s top-1 team for several years, Astralis got blase and started to lose motivation…
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