Na`Vi moves past Cloud9 at ESL One Cologne

The second day of matches at ESL One Cologne concluded with the elimination of the reigning Valve Major champions.

Cloud9 found themselves eliminated from the event after dropping two maps against Na`Vi. C9, who attended the $300,000 event with a stand-in—former mousesports player Martin “STYKO” Styk—only won one game out of five at the event—defeating Ninjas in Pyjamas in the opening round of their group.

This is not to say, however, that Cloud9 were unable to put up a fight against Na`Vi, however. The Ukrainian team, who were easily considered favorites in the match-up, struggled to close out both maps of the series, with Cloud9 garnering more than 10 rounds in each game.

For Cloud9 the strong suits remain apparent: Players like Tarik “tarik” Celik and Timothy “autimatic” Ta can still put up resistance against some of the best players in the world in a duel. The issue, which has seemingly always been a complaint levied against the North American roster, is their tendency to not be able to capitalize strategically on the openings the players create. Granted, this isn’t always easy when coming face-to-face with the best player in the world.

As tends to be the case with Na`Vi, the player to watch ended up being Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev. Time and time again, the 20-year-old superstar found ways of breaching the bombsites on both maps, or completely shutting Cloud9 out while on the Counter-Terrorist side. But what appears to be the strength of Na`Vi in the past couple of months has been the successful integration of Denis “electronic” Sharipov into the roster and a resurgence from Egor “flamie” Vasilyev—which helps alleviate the rifler from always being the sole win-condition for the Ukrainians.

Na`Vi’s victory over Cloud9 was indeed shaky, and it doesn’t bode well for what will be the decisive match for Group A, with the Ukrainian team taking on the tournament’s so far biggest surprise in ENCE at 8:30am CDT.