S1mple crushes FaZe’s push for IEM Cologne repeat

The ESL CS GO player of the decade and HLTV’s best player in the world 3 times, s1mple, continues to showcase just how far ahead he is from most CS GO professional players. CS GO’s greatest player of all time showed some new tricks and plays he has apparently been practicing off the radar against FaZe.

S1mple placed the last dagger on FaZe Clan’s IEM Cologne 2023 campaign, on August 1st. FaZe was looking for a possible repeat title at the cathedral of CS GO, however they have not been playing like themselves since the start of the competition. Facing NAVI in a do or die series was definitely not in their plans, and the Ukrainian organization absolutely demolished the former tournament champions.

The series started with a convincing win for NAVI which then turned into an overtime affair on map 2, Overpass. One kill was the definite moment that granted NAVI a ticket to the main stage, a massive s1mple AWP wallbang against ropz to open up the map in the last round of the match.

NAVI’s in-game leader, Aleksib, was rather close to the action and most likely heard all the noise made by ropz during his transition to the site. However, noise is not enough for a player to accurately place a bullet in their enemies head, but s1mple is not a regular player. A quick AWP flick into ropz avoided FaZe’s plans to attack the A site, quickly rotating to rush the B bombsite in what became a tough 4 vs 5 scenario for them.

Nevertheless, NAVI’s defense was waiting patiently for the rotation, quickly trading kills to ultimately take both the round and a seat at IEM Cologne’s main stage. S1mple’s 55 kills with only 29 deaths showcased his dominance throughout the series, especially when it came to entry fragging.

Early AWP kills on both Overpass and Mirage, were key for NAVI’s playstyle to work. On top of that, s1mple was not the only player pushing aggressively for an early kill, with b1t normally by his side in order to either trade or push for kills once s1mple fired his AWP shot.

Overall the NAVI superstar has been rather underwhelming in 2023 when compared to last year’s numbers, but today he went absolutely ballistic against FaZe to send them home. Now that FaZe is out of the tournament, it seems Team Vitality is the favorite to win it all this year. If this version of s1mple continues to show up at IEM Cologne, Astralis (their next opponent) should be shaking in their boots ahead of their matchup at 12:30pm CT.

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