NAVI are in the midst of a roster change. They recently benched Boombi4 marking the end of an era.
The start of the Russia-Ukraine war earlier this year changed the lives of millions of people all over the world. That list includes several professional esports players as well. Many players from teams located in the region had to relocate to other countries, as their lives took a greater priority than esports. This also meant most of the players were constantly on the road, traveling from one event to another. Recently S1mple spoke about the team's performance and also hinted at his thoughts of taking a break to get his life in order.
In an interview with HLTV.org, S1mple spoke about the various problems facing Navi with one of the most recent being the change in the roster.
"I need to set up my life, I want to play and stream and not worry about other things, not travel with the same bag for six months," S1mple said. "My teammates live with family, b1t is in Spain right now with his mom and dad, sdy lives in Kyiv but he has permission to go to tournaments. I live everywhere, just traveling and traveling, and I have become mentally tired of this."
"We still need to decide if we will stick together or if we should do more changes" - S1mple
When asked about his mystic tweet on June 1, S1mple said he might take a break to get his life in order.
"Maybe I will take a break because I need to do things in life, like I need to move, I need to get a lot of documents... when you have a tournament after tournament you just have no time," S1mple thought out loud.
He also said their future is uncertain both with the organization as well as in terms of the roster.
I don't know what is going to happen with the organization and all the players. We still need to decide if we will stick together or if we should do more changes.
Navi recently made a roster change benching Kirill "Boombl4" Mikhaylov due to high reputational risks. His departure from the team marked the end of an era. With the previous roster, Navi won the PGL Stockholm CS: GO Major as well as completed the Intel Grand Slam. The team was, however, unable to replicate its 2021 dominance this year, mostly due to factors out of their control.
S1mple on the team's mental stress due to the war
When asked if he was disappointed not being able to play out the whole year with the roster, S1mple said they were mentally destroyed when they war started.
Yeah, it felt like Putin decided to remove all CIS teams from winning tournaments and disband them, you know? Because that is the most important thing that happened, when the war started we were mentally destroyed, we even got to the semi-finals.
Navi are currently playing in the BLAST Premier Spring Finals with a stand-in. Taking over Boombi4’s place on the roster is electronic for the squad and S1mple is helping out with his experience. The BLAST Premier Spring finals features eight teams competing for a $425,000 prize pool. The tournament’s winner will receive a direct invitation to the BLAST Premier World Final later this year.
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