Natus Vincere’s superstar Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev is a true superstar in CS:GO and often finds himself under the spotlight in any matches NAVI plays.
Regardless of whether NAVI wins or loses, fans are always paying attention to s1mple’s body language during matches. From a viewer’s standpoint, it looks like s1mple tilts at his teammates whenever NAVI isn’t playing well. That, combined with attitude issues he had at the beginning of his career, earned him the label of a toxic player.
Dot Esports touched on this topic in an interview conducted with s1mple on Sept. 12, ahead of NAVI’s matches at ESL Pro League season 18 group C, and although the Ukrainian superstar said people will always have something to say regardless of what he does or how the team plays, s1mple agreed that he tilts sometimes at his squad.
“Sometimes I’m a bit angry because we lose stupid rounds and I need to control myself,” s1mple told Dot Esports. “But, trust me, I’ve learned to control myself for 10 years and there was a different situation [back then].”
S1mple explained that he just wants his team to not make what he says are “stupid mistakes”. These mistakes are not only losing to teams on full-eco as some fans imagine.
Sometimes, according to s1mple, losing two weapons against a weak buy is already enough to leave the team economy in jeopardy in the long run of a CS:GO match.
“I play a lot of CS, I know what it means when you kill two people on eco, and if you win the next round, their economy is fucked up,” s1mple said. “Some players don’t understand these things, in every team, in Vitality, in ENCE, some players make these stupid mistakes. If we’re already playing well, we can play even better without these mistakes.”
NAVI have quite a long journey ahead of themselves if they want to make a deep run at ESL Pro League season 18. They’ll get to play plenty of matches just in the group stage in the coming days, and fans at home will more than likely observe how s1mple behaves when the pressure gets higher.
