Today Natus Vincere lost to FURIA in the quarterfinals of the IEM Rio Major with a score of 2-1 and left the tournament. Despite the tense confrontation, NAVI did not look like themselves. So what went wrong for the Ukrainian team?

Unprecedented Public Pressure

The first major tournament in Brazil has exactly one cardinal difference - a very noisy audience. And at the matches of the Brazilian teams, it becomes even more active, and because of the screams of the crowd, the players not only get worried but sometimes stop hearing each other. Victor sdy Orudzhev's hands were shaking from such pressure. Of course, NAVI has considerable experience playing in arenas with spectators. However, it had never happened before that the whole audience cheered against the "black and yellow", and the audience influenced the result of the match.

Wrong S1mple

The audience influenced not only the newcomer of NAVI but also the most experienced player, Alexander s1mple Kostylev. The NAVI sniper was distracted by the audience, and he, obviously nervous, was distracted by provocations and played for the audience, which affected the performance. The result was that s1mple played his worst major since 2018 and became the worst player in the match. In many ways, NAVI lacked a sniper.

Weak Ancient

In addition to the psychological factor, NAVI had obvious performance problems. The main weakness of the CIS team at the IEM Rio Major surfaced back in the Legends Stage in the match against Liquid. In that game, the "black and yellow" destroyed Liquid in the first half for CT with a score of 12-3 but lost the map before overtime 16-14. After this meeting, it became clear that NAVI had a feeble attack on Ancient. In the match with FURIA, this was superimposed on the pressure exerted by the crowd, and the CIS team also performed poorly for CT, which gave the Brazilians confidence.

Mirage Isn't the Best Decider Against FURIA

And after 16-10 on Ancient, FURIA found incredible confidence, which the team brought to the third map. It was convenient for the Brazilians. FURIA's aggressive style combines a noisy audience and a map where a lot depends on shooting. And in combination with the confidence that the Brazilians have loaded on Ancient, FURIA could not lose on Mirage.

Minor Mistakes

In many ways, the match's outcome was also decided by seemingly small mistakes. If you don't even consider the shooting, I remember the rounds on both Ancient and Mirage, where important rounds were lost simply because of the lack of defuses. It's one thing when it happens once (it sometimes happens with all teams), but for the "Born to Win", it was a frequent occurrence, not to call it a pattern. In sum, minor miscalculations significantly contributed to the Brazilian club's victory.