Natus Vincere’s Counter-Strike captain Aleksib waved goodbye to CS:GO with a 0-15 losing streak in best-of-five grand finals after the harsh 3-0 loss to MOUZ on Oct. 1 at the ESL Pro League season 18 finals.
This losing streak started in 2019 when Aleksib was still leading ENCE’s all-Finnish lineup. He had the chance to finally stop it yesterday and finish CS:GO on a positive note before the switch to CS2, but NAVI were easy prey to MOUZ in the grand finals and deservedly lost without taking a single map.
Prior to the NAVI-MOUZ bout that was the last tier-one grand finals of CS:GO esports, Aleksib lost by 3-0 twice to FaZe—one while he was in G2 and the other when he was leading OG, one time to Gambit, and once to Team Liquid.
As soon as MOUZ defeated NAVI yesterday, some fans called out Aleksik for being a bad in-game leader. Though his record in best-of-five grand finals is awful, fans forget he’s not the only one to blame. Counter-Strike is a team game and the captain can’t oversee everything his teammates are doing during matches.
Not to mention that some of these blowouts in best-of-five grand finals were to clearly superior teams such as Liquid’s Intel Grand Slam squad, FaZe Clan at IEM New York 2020, and Gambit at IEM Summer 2021.
As painful as Aleksib’s record in best-of-five grand finals is, he’ll have the chance to write a new story in CS2 esports as he’ll likely remain as NAVI’s captain for a long time, especially if the organization remains truthful in housing an international team.
The first big CS2 tournament will take place at IEM Sydney from Oct. 16 to 22 and NAVI are one of the 16 teams attending it.
