Best CS:GO players of 2022 – sh1ro and Ax1Le

The 2022 season had numerous great players from all kinds of CS:GO teams: Natus Vincere, Team Vitality, Team Liquid, FaZe Clan, G2 Esports, and many more. Among them, Cloud9 gave two names: Dimitriy “sh1ro” Sokolov and Sergey “Ax1Le” Rykotorov.

Both of these players did a phenomenal job and received top-five positions in the Top 20 CS:GO Players of the Year.

Cloud9’s 2022 season in CS:GO

Despite not winning anything epic in 2022, Cloud9 had a lot of decent performances and actually won one of the smaller S-tier tournaments, IEM Dallas. At important competitions, such as PGL Major Antwerp, IEM Cologne, and IEM Rio Major, Cloud9 finished in the top 12 and proved to be a tough opponent to play against.

These results were not as great as C9’s management probably expected, but they were still significant and could lead to much better results in 2023.

Sh1ro and Ax1Le were the main carry players for Cloud9 in 2022. They were often helped a lot by Vladislav “nafany” Gorshkov, but the two of them had a level of consistency that was hard to match.

Some of the most impressive performances occurred in key matches. And although C9 ended up losing some of those matches, it doesn’t take away from the players’ merits.

At IEM Dallas, the tournament in which Cloud9 dominated everyone and claimed the trophy, sh1ro and Ax1Le were the best players of the Grand Final. The match ended with a clear victory in their team’s favor. The final score was 3-0.

Sh1ro had a rating 2.0 of 1.50 for the match and his K-D score was off-the-charts: +36. With players like him, it’s actually strange that Cloud9 don’t get better results in high-level tournaments. And unfortunately for the club, their roster is really hard to change because the players are far from home and need each other as friends.

Plus it’s tough to find CIS players who would be willing to compete as part of a Russian roster. At the moment, the situation is very complicated for any esports player from this country. But Cloud9 probably understood what it was getting itself into when it signed the roster back in April 2022.

It remains to be seen if sh1ro and Ax1Le can live up to their remarkable results. Being ranked so high by hltv is quite an achievement and it’s going to be a big plus on their resume.

Header: Cloud9