The best CS:GO players of 2022 – s1mple

There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev is still the best CS:GO player on the planet. But in 2022, Natus Vincere had a much harder season than in 2021.

There was a lot of chaos in the team, a few players had to be changed, and as a result, the overall strength of the roster decreased. At the same time, other competitors upgraded their rosters significantly.

Why s1mple had a tough year

The first reason why s1mple had a tough year in CS:GO has to do with the departure of Kirill “Boombl4” Mikhaylov, who was benched at the end of May. His place was quickly taken by Viktor “sdy” Orudzhev, who did a pretty good job but wasn’t able to fully preserve Na’Vi’s strength, which is probably what s1mple had in mind.

Apart from the departure of the team’s IGL, Na’Vi had to face tough opponents. FaZe Clan was much stronger than in 2021, Team Liquid was also good, G2 Esports went from good to great towards the end of the year thanks to Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov’s prowess, and Team Vitality was a constant threat because of Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut.

The third problem for s1mple was the war started by Russia against his country. This caused him to be away from home and had a big impact on his physical and mental health. It’s undeniable that he constantly played with a lot of worries in the back of his mind and he probably also slipped into some poor eating habits.

The s1mple of 2023 weighs a lot more than the s1mple of 2020 and 2021, and that’s never good for a professional player. Even though esports is not a physical sport, focusing for long periods of time requires being in good physical condition.

When that is lost, a lot of other things are lost with it, including part of the motivation and part of the ability to focus when it matters most.

At the highest competitive level, differences are made by moments of brilliance and the margin of error is very small. You can lose a map with a score of 14-16 and that might result in being eliminated from an S-tier tournament.

How bad was it

Things weren’t terrible all things considered, but they weren’t at all as good as s1mple had planned. The best results for Na’Vi came at BLAST Premier: Spring Finals (first place), IEM Cologne (second place), and PGL Major Antwerp (second place).

Header: ESL