Counter-Strike: Global Offensive superstar Oleksandr ‘s1mple’ Kostyliev revealed a shocking fact in an interview with Natus Vincere.
S1mple is widely regarded as one of the best CS:GO players in the world, having consistently competed against the best teams and preforming incredibly well.
He currently represents Natus Vincere, a team that has seen some ups and downs lately as they struggle for form amid some of their biggest roster changes yet.
The Ukranian was interviewed by his team on October 29, where he answered numerous questions about the organization, including opinions about the new players, thoughts on Danylo ‘Zeus’ Teslenko’s retirement, and more.
He spoke about the team’s preparation, stating that “right now we are more productive because we didn’t know when Zeus would retire.” Zeus’ retirement was complicated for the team as “one day he wanted to quit, then the next he wanted to keep playing.”
S1mple then added something rather unexpected, saying “I think the last 3-4 months went wrong in terms of preparation” because players thought of the situation as “the last crusade” and “no one cared” about the team as they could see things massively changing when Zeus finally decided to retire.
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This showed in their results, as in the few months before Danylo’s retirement, the team only played in a handful of events, placing poorly in most of them, such as a second last place at Blast Pro Series Miami and a 10 place finish at the ESL Pro League Season 9 finals.
The Na`Vi’s star then commented on his new teammates Kirill ‘Boombl4’ Mikhailov and Ladislav ‘GuardiaN’ Kovács, saying that both are still settling in but are proving very promising, highlighting Boombl4 as a reliable In-Game Leader.
He also said that Guardian is working on being more aggressive and that he will AWP alongside him on the Counter-Terrorist side, in an attempt to improve their defense.
Finally, he finished with a cheeky jab at his newest teammate, telling him that he needs to work on his Russian a bit, probably because he has been playing with international teams for so long.
S1mple and Natus Vincere will next be in action in November at BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen 2019, where fans will be able to see how well he has adjusted to his role, and how much the team has improved.