The best CS:GO players of 2022 – ZywOo

Individually, Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut had a great year. His performance was just as spectacular as that of 2021, when he nearly won the race for the best CS:GO player of the year. Only Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev was better than him.

For 2022, he’s definitely getting a top 5 or even a top 3 placement again. We’ll find the results in the coming weeks.

ZywOo’s 2022

ZywOo plays for one of the best French teams in CS:GO. Team Vitality are quite strong right now and are ranked 11th globally. However, that rank should probably be at least five positions better than it is. Whenever Vitality enter a tournament, they are expected to compete in the playoffs and get a good result.

In 2022, ZywOo and Vitality managed to win one S-tier event: ESL Pro League Season 16. The Grand Final against Team Liquid was extremely difficult and ZywOo had one of the best performances of his career, ending the match with 143 kills and just 93 deaths. The second-best player on the server was Keith “NAF” Markovic: 110 K – 100 D.

Despite winning just one big trophy all year, Vitality did reasonably well at a lot of other tournaments and always looked threatening. Something is still not clicking for them, or perhaps the other top teams are much stronger. But in 2023, ZywOo might succeed with this team at a much higher level.

His 2022 performance was so good that if one or two other members of his team would have helped him a bit more in the key matches, the French squad would have won a lot more tournaments.

One thing that makes ZywOo unique is his unusual playstyle. He simply doesn’t do standard things and his understanding of every situation is much better than that of the average player. His teammates said that he’s impossible to copy.

Most players play by the book, but he doesn’t. And what’s fascinating is that he manages to vary his style so much that he is practically impossible to read.

On every map, he has a wide range of tactics and he tries not to repeat timings and moves. This way, his opponents need to play in a very calculated manner and can’t ever abuse a tactic against him. It will not work.

Important results

In 2022, ZywOo finished 9^th-12^th at IEM Cologne, 9^th-11^th at PGL Major Antwerp, 9^th-12^th at IEM Katowice, 13^th-16^th at ESL Pro League Season 15, 12^th-14^th at IEM Rio Major, and 5^th-6^th at BLAST Premier: World Final. His only victory came at EPL S16.

Header: ESL