BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 playoffs: NAVI players suffer huge upset

BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023, the last CS:GO Major in history, resulted in a lot of upsets. The legends stage closed out with the biggest one as well: Natus Vincere (NAVI), Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyljev's team, got eliminated. Read on for the recap and what teams will be at the BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 playoffs.

Underdogs Major

Among the eight teams that qualified for the BLAST.tv Paris Major's playoffs, some of them are not as well-known. Even though giants like Vitality, Heroic, FaZe Clan, and Liquid made it through, others such as Monte, GamerLegion, Apeks, and Into The Breach came as surprise additions.

To get to the playoffs, all of those teams took down goliaths along the way. Monte used Volodymyr "Woro2k" Veletnjuk's anger toward s1mple to pass through NAVI. GamerLegion and Apeks took on the Sweden legends Fnatic and Ninjas in Pyjamas. Meanwhile, Into The Breach won a close game against FaZe Clan.

Vitality and Heroic are favorites at the BLAST.tv Major playoffs

In the Major of the underdogs, two of the giants prevailed. Vitality and Heroic made it through the legends stage without any scares. Both teams qualified with three victories and arrived at the playoffs as the favorites.

Vitality was perhaps a little ahead in the run since they played in front of the home crowd in Paris. The French squad didn't lose even a single map in the tournament. It seemed like the team took advantage of the momentum gained from their IEM Rio 2023 victory.

BLAST.tv Major players (Image via Michal Konkol and BLAST.tv)

FaZe Clan took down NAVI in a spectacular game

NAVI didn't qualify, but it could have very well been FaZe Clan in the same situation. The two teams faced each other for one spot in the champions stage. The Ukrainian team even had six match points to defeat Finn "karrigan" Andersen, but FaZe Clan made a huge comeback and won the game in overtime. Even though the team didn't perform as expected in the challengers and legends stages, its lineup already conquered a Grand Slam and a Major trophy.