NAVI have announced that Viktor ‘sdy’ Orudzhev will be part of the team at least until the end of the current CS:GO Major cycle.
The news brings an end to speculation about NAVI’s fifth player for the new tournament season, which begins on August 19 with the BLAST Premier Fall Groups.
The announcement was made by NAVI coach Andrey ‘B1ad3’ Gorodenskiy in a video posted on the organization’s YouTube channel.
“We’ve had some pretty good results with sdy,” B1ad3 said. “That’s why we decided it makes sense to keep going with him as a stand-in, giving him a chance to prove himself even more since he’s making a lot of mistakes and he’s not fully comfortable in the game.
“The idea is to make him reveal more of his potential and get comfortable. We’ll see how he does going forward.”
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Helping NAVI
sdy stepped in for Kirill ‘Boombl4’ Mikhaylov in the season’s final leg after the Russian player was removed from the team due to what NAVI described as “high reputational risks for the club”.
With sdy as a stand-in and Denis ‘electroNic’ Sharipov as the new in-game leader, NAVI won the BLAST Premier Spring Final and finished second to FaZe at IEM Cologne 2022.
sdy has not exactly been a standout performer, as his 0.98 HLTV rating shows, but NAVI have decided to give the Ukrainian player more time, confident that they will still be able to contend for titles in the new season.
NAVI will play their first match of the season on August 20 against Complexity in the opening round of Group B, which also includes G2 Esports and Team Liquid.
NAVI CS:GO roster:
- Aleksandr ‘s1mple’ Kostyliev
- Denis ‘electroNic’ Sharipov
- Ilya ‘Perfecto’ Zalutskiy
- Valeriy ‘b1t’ Vakhovskiy
- Viktor ‘sdy’ Orudzhev
