ESL One Cologne 2019: NAVI.GG.BET to playoff!

An intense final series of groups secures us a playoff spot!

Having beaten mousesports, NAVI.GG.BET made it into the playoffs of ESL One Cologne: now our guys will play in front of thousands of fans at Lanxess Arena! The contender of the Born to Win in the quarter-finals will be the loser of Astralis - NiP game.

Natus Vincere’s journey to this began with a victory over mousesports (16: 14 - Train). On the same game day, the guys had a series with the best team in the world at the moment — Team Liquid. On the first two maps, the pace was dictated by Natus Vincere, we didn't manage to transform the lead into a win: the Americans were stronger in overtime on Dust2 (22: 19), and also claimed Mirage (16: 8), giving our team only Overpass (14: 16).  

So, on the second game day, the Born to Win had to fight FURIA and our guys had no right to make mistakes. As expected, the Brazilians put up quite a fight with Natus Vincere, but we still claimed the win on 2 maps(16:12 - Nuke; 16:14 - Overpass).

In the final round, fate again brought NAVI to mousesports. After dropping into the lower bracket, the “mice” beat MVP PK and FaZe Clan with the same score - 2: 0. The European team, yet again, gave  Natus Vincere quite a run, but we managed to come out on top. The final result - a victory with a score of 2:1 and exit to the playoffs!

The best  NAVI player of the group stage became  Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev, who finished this stage of the tournament in the third place (1.31 rating). In addition, Sasha topped the list of players with the maximum number of frags (240) and opening frags (38).  

Congratulations to our guys; they had a good run in the group stage and deserved their spot in the playoffs! The final stage of the tournament will take place on July 5–7, and NAVI will find out who their opponent is at the end of the evening matches. We hope our players will study the next opponent and will perform well in the quarterfinals! #NAVINATION