CEO of NAVI: "Without lineup changes our team is able dominate for a year or two"

CEO of NAVI Evgeniy Zolotarev gave an interview to the club's YouTube channel, where he summed up the results of 2021 for the CS:GO division. Among other things, the head noted that the current roster is able to dominate the professional scene for several more years without having to change players.

NAVI era? I don’t know. It’s all subjective. Let people judge for themselves. I see that the guys want more, they want to break records, they want to continue to hold the top position in the HLTV.org ranking and are not ready to stop at one Major and one Intel Grand Slam. Now I see the potential for our roster to dominate for a year or two without lineup changes. It all depends only on the players. Even if one piece of the mechanism fails, anything can happen. Now, they are as motivated as ever.

According to Zolotarev, the success of the roster in 2021 has a direct impact on the commercial success of the club.

We are BLAST and ESL partners, sharing in profits. It means we receive a certain profit from these leagues, which goes mostly to the club, and partly to the players. This profit directly depends on a number of factors. When it comes to ESL, these are views and results, while for BLAST it’s views, results and our social media for promoting the league. In both of these we are the leading team, if I'm not mistaken. We have quite high figures from the leagues, prize money and stickers. Because of the failed major in Rio de Janeiro, Valve released stickers that were sold not for a month, as always, but for three months, which means the profit here is also very significant. Yes, clubs give the bigger part of their incomes to players. Nevertheless, we are still talking seven-digit numbers.

Speaking about developing young players in the NAVI system, the CEO of the Ukrainian organization indirectly confirmed a soon-to-be transfer of Ilya "m0NESY" Osipov to G2 and added that thanks to the well-coordinated operation of the youth teams, the club is not intended to purchase other esports athletes for the starting five in the future.

In order for new stars to appear, there must be vacant places for them in the main lineup. Now it would only be harmful to make any changes to the main team. The guys who have outgrown NAVI Junior should be given the opportunity to realize their potential in other places. That is why the entire roster was transfer-listed. For some, the negotiations are in process, some are thinking of playing with a stack or another club, and some are already in another club. Who? I can’t disclose it yet, but everyone surely has a clue who we are talking about. <...> As I said earlier, we will only consider it in an urgent situation... I hope we won’t have to buy players in CS. We want to lead them from 13-14 years old until they make it to the main roster.

This year, NAVI won eight big tournaments, the most prestigious of which was PGL Major Stockholm 2021. The team also won the third season of the Intel Grand Slam.

Origin: youtu.be