At the beginning of the week, the head of Natus Vincere Evgeniy “HarisPilton” Zolotarev published a post on his Telegram channel in which he summed up the results of the season for the team. He said that they started the year very successfully, and after winning at IEM Katowice, all members of the esports organization were confident that they would be able to maintain a dominant position in the rankings throughout the year.
However, the team was not immediately able to assess the seriousness of the situation with the coronavirus pandemic and the difficulties that would have to be overcome due to changes in the tournament format. Unable to immediately adapt to them, NAVI suffered several major defeats, in particular, they performed unsuccessfully at Road to Rio. It later turned out that one of the reasons for the loss was the use of a “coaching bug.” by the Hard Legion team, but this was not yet known at that time. The management was ready to make difficult personnel decisions, but decided to give the roster one more chance, and the team lived up to its expectations.
As a result, NAVI managed to adapt to online competitions and, if not return to peak form, then achieve consistently good results at tournaments in the second half of the year. Zolotarev also separately noted the successes of the youth team. It managed to gather players who have good potential, and in the future it plans to expand the main roster so that e-sportsmen can compete with each other.
