NAVI has confirmed that its star player and CS:GO GOAT, S1mple will miss out on participating in the first tournament in the CS2 era of Counter-Strike esports. A release from NAVI says team coach B1ad3 will be filling in to round out the roster as s1mple will not be attending IEM Sydney.
The reason for s1mple’s absence from the IEM Sydney with NAVI is that his EU residency papers are not yet ready. Getting into Sydney isn’t going to be much of a problem, but returning to the EU could be difficult without his residency papers.
This development leaves NAVI with B1ad3, who, despite the fact that he’s not a newbie to the professional server, hasn’t played at this level since his days with FlipSid3 Tactics and is a significant downgrade to S1mple.
The break may be a good thing for s1mple, considering some of the things he has said about the CS2 since its release. The stellar AWPer listed the Issues he has with the game and ended up saying, “Don’t play this shit game [right now].”
Some of the problems he cited were the immense amount of bugs and bad servers in the game. Furthermore, the online experience is different from the LAN experience, but with the unstable build online, there may be many bugs and glitches in the early days of IEM Sydney.
The final days of CS:GO saw NAVI underperform as s1mple’s tilting streak returned, and as such, this break may be a blessing in disguise for the player if all of the frustrations build over inside the team and in the server.
Meanwhile, s1mple’s appearance or otherwise in the first CS2 tournament does not reduce his status as one of the greatest CS players of all time, plus he will have a lot of chances to fight for glory in CS2, especially in 2024.
Daniel Ademiju Idowu
