After being elected ESL’s CS:GO player of the decade and winning HLTV’s best player in the world award for the third time in 2022, we thought that s1mple couldn’t surprise us any further in CS:GO. But the GOAT still has some neat tricks up his sleeves.
For many fans, s1mple dealt FaZe Clan’s final blow at IEM Cologne 2023 on Aug. 1. NAVI and FaZe were playing the last round of overtime on Overpass when the Ukrainian superstar grabbed the first kill on ropz with a “disgusting” wallbang, as desk host Freya Spiers called it after the game was over.
It’s unclear if Aleksib told s1mple that ropz was there because of all the noise he made or if the AWPer just shot there out of intuition as that spot is usually used to boost players. Either way, the wallbang kill forced FaZe to rush the B bombsite in a four-vs-five disadvantage and they got shut down by NAVI’s defense, losing the map and the series as a whole.
Related: ‘Screw Aleksib haters’: jL defends CS:GO in-game leader after years of criticism
This wallbang wasn’t the only thing s1mple did today to help NAVI eliminate FaZe from IEM Cologne and remain alive to fight for a playoff spot in the LANXESS Arena. The GOAT put on an absolute masterclass on Overpass and Mirage and finished the series with 55 kills and just 29 deaths.
S1mple isn’t having a good individual year in 2023 when we compare it to the numbers he posted in 2022, but today, he absolutely showed his peak form when NAVI needed it most. This is the s1mple NAVI will need to beat dev1ce and the rest of Astralis later today at 12:30pm CT and make it out of the IEM Cologne 2023 groups.
