Natus Vincere vs Team Vitality betting tips – BLAST Premier Spring

NATUS VINCERE VS VITALITY BLAST PREMIER SERIES SPRING 2020 BETTING PREVIEW

Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev and Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut will lead their teams into battle this Friday when Natus Vincere lock horns with Vitality in the opening fixture of Group B at BLAST Premier: Spring 2020.

Natus Vincere entered the inaugural season of the BLAST Premier Series hoping to claim their first LAN title since April 2019, when they won StarSeries & i-League CS:GO Season 7. For the past 10 months, s1mple and the company have put up mediocre results and failed to find any consistency.

Once regarded as one of the best teams in the world, NaVi endured a steady decline for the large part of 2019 and are now ranked eighth in the world on HLTV’s global rankings. There are many theories as to why Natus Vincere have been underperforming for almost a year, with many in the CS:GO esports community singling out Ladislav “GuradiaN” Kovács.

GuardiaN, who was a member of Natus Vincere for almost four years from 2013-2017, left for FaZe Clan in August 2017 and returned to the CIS squad two years later. Since his return, however, GuardiaN’s performances were less than impressive, as he averaged a 0.95 rating across four months.

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On January 24, Natus Vincere finally decided to bench GuardiaN in favour of Ilya “Perfecto” Zalutskiy, who joined the team from Syman Gaming. Since his arrival, Perfecto has played three games for Natus Vincere at the ICE Challenge, where they defeated GODSENT twice and OG to set up a date with mousesports in the grand finals. Perfecto averaged a 1.04 rating across the three fixtures.

Vitality have not made any significant changes to the team since the signing of Richard “shox” Papillon back in September 2019. Shox arrived as a replacement for Nathan “NBK-” Schmitt, who left for OG at the end of the year. In January, Vitality also signed Mathieu “MaT” Leber as their assistant coach.

Unlike Natus Vincere, who struggled to make any noise in the CS:GO scene in 2019, Vitality saw plenty of success last year. Some of their most notable results were the ECS Season 7 title in June, fifth-eighth place at the Berlin Major, a silver medal at DreamHack Masters Malmö and the EPICENTER 2019 title at the end of December.

While all praiseworthy achievements, Vitality are also one of the most inconsistent teams in the game because they heavily rely on their star player, ZywOo. He averaged an impressive 1.56 rating in Vitality’s last five fixtures, where they defeated HellRaisers (2-0), EHOME (2-0), Natus Vincere (2-1), Heroic (2-0) and mousesports (2-1) in the finals of EPICENTER 2019.

NATUS VINCERE VS VITALITY BLAST PREMIER SPRING BETTING PREDICTIONS

This clash will be close and esports bookmakers have done an excellent job showing that with the betting odds.

Natus Vincere and Vitality met three times in 2019 and it was Vitality who pocketed two wins. However, it’s worth noting all three fixtures were close. Their first meeting at the IEM XII Katowice New Legends Stage ended in a 25-22 win for Natus Vincere, while their second clash at DreamHack Masters Malmö in October and most recent at EPICENTER ended in 2-1 wins for Vitality.

Besides the departure of GuardiaN and arrival of Perfecto at Natus Vincere, there have been no significant changes in either of the teams since their last meeting, which leads us to believe the balance of power will remain mostly the same. Vitality’s chances to win here will rely solely on ZywOo’s performance, while NaVi will look at s1mple and Perfecto to step up and show their worth.

This match can go either way, yet we are confident neither team has the tools to produce a clean sweep. Three rounds is what we expect to see, while generous betting odds on Natus Vincere’s outright win makes them a very solid pick as well.