NAVI’s Major win may have seemed like a fluke back in March, but the team is now looking like one of the generational greats, capping another tournament run with a victory after mighty struggles in the playoffs, with a huge comeback on Ancient to score a 3-1 win against MOUZ.
After an impressive display of resilience in the semifinals against Heroic, NAVI had to dig deep once again in the grand final. It may not have seemed like it would come to this considering how Aleksib’s squad raced to a 2-0 lead over MOUZ, courtesy of wins on Inferno and Dust2, with the second being a 13-2 trouncing, but it’s a testament to their young opponents’ mettle that they battled back with a 13-6 win on Mirage and got a monstrous 10-2 CT half on Ancient, which seemed to all but set up a decider on Nuke.
It wasn’t to be, however, as NAVI embarked on a comeback for the ages, putting up an even more impenetrable defense, only dropping the fourth round in the second half and then converting eight in a row to do what seemed impossible and close out the map—and the championship—in regulation.
“We spoke about it the whole tournament, no matter how much you’re down, you can still win,” was what NAVI’s jL had to say in the post-match interview, adding, “But it also works both ways, no matter how much you are up, you can also still lose, so keep focus.”. It was a fantastic display of resilience from a team that’s clearly running on fumes as they reached six grand finals in a row in a grueling schedule.
An interesting side plot from the post-match discussions was how MOUZ’s Jimpphat was quite coy about his future prospects. “For now, I’m really happy to be here,” said the Finnish youngster, who had multiple highlight-worthy moments tonight despite being on the losing side, including a monstrous clutch on Ancient.
It was iM and w0nderful who topped the charts for NAVI, who did a great job keeping xertioN and Brollan quiet in the highly entertaining series. With this win, the yellow-and-black outfit has now secured back-to-back Intel Grand Slam wins, but they still need two more to secure the million-dollar bonus.
Next up: the BLAST Premier World Final in early November—and then, the next Counter-Strike Major campaign is upon us.
