Ukrainian esports organization NAVI has managed to take down FaZe in a remarkable fashion to secure their semi-final spot against Astralis in the ongoing IEM Rio 2023 CSGO tournament. The Group B lower bracket brawl between the two ended 2-0 in favor of NAVI as FaZe seemed to be far from their best performance throughout the series.

The first game on Mirage ended with a score of 16-7 in favor of NAV, with Justinas “jL” Lekavicius topping the leaderboard with a 26-10 KDR. The second game on Overpass was a much closer one, and overtime was needed to settle the scores between the teams. NAVI managed to pull off a 19-17 victory at the end, rallying behind a whopping 40-kill from Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev.

“I didn’t feel like they were FaZe, usually when you play FaZe you get headshotted instantly and they swing on you together, and it was kinda lacking that,” jL said in a post-match interview.

Finn “⁠karrigan⁠” Andersen also claimed that the team didn’t feel like its usual self, “I think three out of four maps we were not ourselves. The way we were losing to NAVI in the first map and the way we were losing to G2 in the first map, it’s just not good enough.”

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