On September 7, Natus Vincere will face Eternal Fire in a Group A match at ESL Pro League Season 20 for CS2. The winner of the battle will secure a spot directly in the tournament quarterfinals. The match is scheduled to start at 20:30 EEST. Bo3.gg, in collaboration with Fedir "KvaN" Zakharov, presents a preview, prediction, and analysis of this match.

Current form

Recently, Natus Vincere (NAVI) has been showing excellent form. Their average team rating at S-tier tournaments over the past month is 6.4. Of the two major tournaments held this month, they participated in only one—IEM Cologne 2024, where they took a prestigious second place. In the final of this tournament, they lost to Team Vitality but had previously secured important victories against paiN Gaming, Astralis, SAW, and MOUZ. At the current championship, NAVI has already defeated Lynn Vision and Ninjas in Pyjamas. Therefore, NAVI has won four of their last five matches, highlighting their stability and readiness for new challenges.

Eternal Fire has shown more mixed results over the past month. Their average rating at S-tier events is 6.1. During this period, they participated in two major tournaments—IEM Cologne 2024 and BetBoom Dacha Belgrade 2024 #2. While the Cologne tournament was a complete failure, with the team finishing 17th-20th, they reached the finals in Belgrade, losing only to Team Spirit. Like NAVI, Eternal Fire has won four of their last five matches, with victories over paiN Gaming, MOUZ, FlyQuest, and Sangal Esports.

Map pool

NAVI traditionally bans the map Vertigo, which they have done 33 times in the past six months. This is due to their lack of confidence on this location. In terms of map choices, their most preferred are Mirage (win rate 77%) and Nuke (win rate 55%). However, their most successful map by win percentage is Dust2—78%. NAVI will likely choose Mirage as their main map, as it brings them the most success.

Eternal Fire prefers to ban the map Ancient, which they have done 38 times. This is one of their weakest locations, making this ban expected. Meanwhile, the team often chooses Vertigo (win rate 67%) or Anubis (win rate 88%), the latter being their strongest map. Eternal Fire is likely to choose Anubis as their map. After the ban and pick exchange, Dust2, which has a good win rate for both teams, will likely remain as the decider.

Head-to-head

NAVI and Eternal Fire last met six months ago in the quarterfinals of PGL Major Copenhagen 2024. In that match, NAVI won 2:0, claiming victories on Mirage (16:13) and Inferno (13:9). This match was one of the key moments in NAVI's journey to winning the major, further boosting their confidence ahead of their upcoming encounter with the Turkish team.

KvaN's prediction

Fedir "KvaN" Zakharov, a commentator for Maincast studio, has analyzed and commented on numerous major Counter-Strike tournaments. This year, exclusively for Bo3.gg, he has already made several predictions, all of which were 100% accurate!

So far, EPL has been progressing smoothly for NAVI, where they face a slightly stronger opponent at each stage. If there were no doubts that NAVI would win against Lynn Vision and Ninjas in Pyjamas, the match against Eternal Fire promises to be more competitive.

On the one hand, Eternal Fire is currently finding good form, but on the other hand, they have historically been a rather favorable opponent for NAVI. In the past year, Eternal Fire has only won one map in head-to-head meetings with NAVI.

Considering that the outcome of this match doesn't decide much, I hope we will see a calm and balanced game, where both teams can showcase all their recent developments.

Fedir "KvaN" Zakharov

PREDICTION: 2:1 in favor of Natus Vincere

ESL Pro League Season 20 is taking place from September 3 to 22 in Malta. The teams are competing for a prize pool of $750,000. You can follow the schedule and results of the championship via this link.