Natus Vincere made it to the ESL Pro League Season 16 playoffs despite losing three out of five matches in the group stage. Although Natus Vincere, Spirit, and Ninjas in Pyjamas had the same number of wins at the end of this stage, NAVI gained an advantage over the two opponents due to the difference in the number of rounds won and lost. Thus, from this group fnatic, Vitality and Natus Vincere are in the playoffs.
Commenting on the not too successful start to ESL Pro League Season 16, Alexander «s1mple» Kostylev noted that NAVI did not have the opportunity to spend enough time practicing together. Since the lineup was doing a bootcamp with headtr1ck, they didn't have time to work out a game involving s1mple. He expects that now the team will have enough time before the playoffs to fix this problem.
Analyzing the unsuccessful match against Vitality, one of the NAVI participants Victor «sdy» Orudzhev mentioned that the squad made too many mistakes, the reasons for which still need to be sorted out. According to him, the players at times misjudged the situation or acted uncoordinated, which ultimately led to the defeat.
NAVI will now face the ESL Pro League Season 16 playoffs, which begin on September 27.