Finally, after a one-year break, Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev has decided to join Team Falcons. Natus Vincere loaned him for three months but if things go well, he will likely stay there for at least one season.
But now the question is: can s1mple change Falcons’ results? After all, he’s already tried to do this back in March and Falcons lost their very first match at BLAST Premier Spring Showdown, against Metizport.
What To Expect
One year is a very long time in any esport but in CS2’s case, the situation is far worse than it looks on paper. The problem here is that the current version of Counter-Strike was released precisely one year ago. S1mple quit playing almost immediately after.
This means that he’s one year behind the other competitors, at least at the professional level. No doubt, he’s played a lot of CS2 individually, but everyone knows that solo queueing for games does not help you to keep up with the tactics and strategies employed by professional teams.
At the highest competitive level, maps are often won through superior tactics. Sure, if you have someone who can solve 1v1 or even 1v2 situations like Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut, that’s a big advantage. But in most cases, the team with the better playstyle wins.
Back when he decided to take a break, s1mple was more or less at ZywOo’s level. If he’s still the same player, he will no doubt adapt to CS2’s meta in just a few months.
Team Falcons will compete in at least one more tournament this year: Thunderpick World Championship 2024. If things go well, they should also qualify for the next Major, which is scheduled to take place in the first half of December, in Shanghai.
These next three months will be decisive both for Falcons’ current roster as well as for s1mple’s reputation. With many in the CS2 community criticizing his “Play like s1mple” project or regarding him as being over the hill, he has much to prove if he wants to retain his large following.
One thing to note here is that the player replaced by s1mple is Alvaro “SunPayus” Garcia, who did a pretty good job for Falcons since he joined the organization but did not manage to save the team from an early elimination from most of the tournaments it attended.
