NAVI’s first best-of-three match in the ESL Pro League season 16 playoffs has been plagued with technical issues throughout their last map. Despite all the drama, NAVI pulled off the win against their Danish opponents, Heroic.
Heroic held on tight throughout the first two maps of the best-of-three, but all the tech pauses seemed to take the wind out of their sails as NAVI pushed on to dominate the Danes on the last map.
The first map, Mirage 16-14, went the way of NAVI, despite Casper “cadiaN” Møller’s heroics. The Danish IGL carried his team on his back, taking the match to a nail-biting finish, but he ultimately couldn’t push the Heroic squad over the line.
Inferno 14-16, was the next map, with Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev waking up and dropping 28 kills, with an especially strong showing on the CT side. However, the Danish Heroic squad pushed on to turn the tides in the last few rounds of the map to take the win.
The last map of the series was Overpass 16-7. This match was filled with a series of technical issues that stirred a lot of controversy.
Even though the tech issues mainly happened to NAVI, Heroic’s momentum seemingly disappeared, causing the CIS squad to take control of the map, finishing off with ease. The last knife kill by s1mple was indicative of the destruction they’d just caused.
NAVI’s next target is the revitalized G2 squad, as s1mple and the team progress into the quarterfinals to go toe-to-toe with Nikola “NiKo” Kovač and the rest of the international roster.
Published: Sep 28, 2022 07:13 pm