Thorin Criticized Natus Vincere’s CS2 Roster After Defeat to SAW

CS2 analyst Duncan Thorin Shields commented on the current form of the Natus Vincere roster. In a podcast on the Last Free Nation Counter-Strike channel, he stated that the team lacks firepower and a good map pool.

“We are now seeing NAVI’s trajectory. At the end of last year, everyone forgave their performances at the Major and BLAST: ‘It’s okay, it’s not so bad, you were still the best team in the world, and anyone can screw up at the Major — it happens’. On the other hand, after reaching the top level, you shouldn’t have that many competitors, NAVI are almost obliged to always reach the semi-finals.

But this NAVI roster looks just awful. ‘We have the best players in our team’. Not anymore. You have b1t and iM — that’s it. JL is not showing great play, everyone is waiting for w0nderful to be kicked, and Aleksib has never made many frags.

And now look at NAVI’s map pool — the team has big problems. If you didn’t know, at LAN they haven’t played even six different maps. NAVI has not yet had to play Anubis. In their map pool, there are five maps, while now they will only win on Mirage, maybe on Inferno and on Dust2, if it is not banned. That’s it. NAVI is doing badly on Nuke, and playing Ancient is a real shame. <…> I’m already worried about this team, it’s like it’s standing on the edge of a cliff.”

Natus Vincere began their performance at ESL Pro League Season 21 with a defeat from SAW in the second group stage. In a best-of-three series, the team of Alexi Aleksib Virolainen won only on Inferno, losing on Nuke and Ancient. Follow the progress of the competition in the report.