What’s Going Wrong With NAVI? – ESL Pro League Analysis

It feels a little toxic to question the problems with a team coming off the back of a win. NAVI have just beat a spirited TYLOO side 2:1 at ESL Pro League Season 21, but anyone with eyes could tell you that the scoreline doesn’t tell the full story. Questions are starting to be asked of this team, and they don’t always have the answers. You could argue that dropping a map to a team like TYLOO is enough to tell you there’s a problem for a team with NAVI’s ambitions.

Right now, NAVI look a far cry from the team that won tons of silverware throughout 2024. So what’s the problem, exactly? As with any competitive environment, there’s no one correct answer. There are plenty of theories, though, and those, we certainly can look at.

w0nderful’s inconsistency puts a hard cap on deep runs

Both the eye test and the numbers show that w0nderful is one of the biggest issues NAVI have at the moment. He has plenty of credit in the bank with this team, and his age (20) means some inconsistency can be expected, so I wouldn’t exactly say he’s in danger of being kicked. But to contend for trophies at the top of competitive Counter-Strike right now, you need your AWPer online. That’s a fact. Spirit have sh1ro. Vitality have ZywOo. G2 have m0NESY.

The above AWPers are game-changers. Can we really say the same about w0nderful right now? I wouldn’t say so. He was always a pretty passive AWPer, and that means you have to hit the easy shots. Far too often at the moment, w0nderful is missing the totally free kills. At the top, this thin margin can be the difference between winning and losing. As an AWPer, you only need to do this kind of disappearing act once to cost your team a place in the tournament.

We saw this when NAVI were eliminated from IEM Katowice 2025. At the time, w0nderful took his share of the flak, so we won’t rehash that. But realistically, if NAVI are to return to winning ways, they need w0nderful to find a bit more consistency, or the team’s deep runs will be limited.

jL’s form changes NAVI’s win conditions

When this NAVI roster was first put together almost two years ago, jL was seen as a support piece. His contributions were never supposed to be key to the team’s win conditions, but that quickly changed when his extraordinary ceiling became apparent. During NAVI’s trophy-rich 2024 season, jL arguably became NAVI’s star, frequently topping the scoreboard and vastly overperforming initial expectations.

2025 has been a little different. Much like w0nderful, jL has started to show some inconsistency in his game. We saw this in the ESL Pro League 21 opener against SAW, where he was among the worst performers in the server against a team NAVI should be sweeping aside with ease. The problem is that he has now made himself essential to NAVI’s win condition. When he doesn’t show up, they struggle to win.

This might be something NAVI has to solve on a tactical level. After all, the plan was always for jL to be that support in the first place. The problem is that these problems may be intertwined – can they really afford to reduce reliance on jL if their AWPer can’t increase his own output to make up for it? It’s a complicated problem, one that I don’t envy B1ad3 in having to solve.

NAVI’s problems go deeper than this

I’ve discussed two of the biggest reasons I think NAVI could be in a season devoid of much success, but it’s obviously not fair to pin the blame purely on two players. The problems go deeper than this. Aleskib is occasionally prone to his best HooXi impression, which makes it difficult to get over the line on some maps.

There’s also something to be highlighted about the vibes in NAVI. I don’t usually put too much stake in team comms, as a competitive environment can naturally lead to tensions boiling over. However, give this a listen from NAVI’s match against TYLOO:

this is mental pic.twitter.com/uVQ2dK60O9

— Benjamin Doughty (@esioLoL) March 8, 2025

This was a match NAVI were winning comfortably at this point. If there was a vibecheck, NAVI would definitely fail it on this evidence. Again, it could be nothing, but it’s worth highlighting that the environment might not be the best right now. They may have had enough in the tank to beat TYLOO, but tilt like this against a better team and it might not be so pretty.

I’ll be keeping a close eye on NAVI throughout the rest of ESL Pro League Season 21. They’re the defending champions of the event, having won Season 20, but they’ll have to show a much better face if they’re to come out on top again.