Natus Vincere will face off with Team Vitality in a Best of 5 Grand Final for the ESL Pro League Season 14 crown. This will be a rematch of the IEM Beijing 2020 Grand Final where Team Vitality reversed swept NaVi 3-2 to take home the trophy.
Team Vitality was arguably the most successful team of 2020 and perhaps the only team to implement the 6-man roster well in tier 1 CS, with the addition of Scream’s brother ‘Nivera’. But 2021 hasn’t been so kind to them, especially with the retirement of ‘RpK’ and adding rookie ‘Kyojin’ to the lineup. On the contrary, NaVi have only gone from strength to strength after losing 2 Best of 5 Grand Finals in 2020.
They have undoubtedly been the best team of 2021, with only Gambit managing to put up a fair fight against them. But as of late, there has been only 1 clear winner and it is NaVi.
ESL Pro League Season 14 is where Vitality have shown hints of their 2020 form, with each member holding their own against the best teams and of course, world #1 for 2 years on the trot Mathieu ‘ZywOo’ Herbaut playing lights out this event. He is the second highest-rated player of the event with a 1.34 rating second only to Oleksandr ‘s1mple’ Kostyliev who sports a 1.39 rating.
Rightly termed A clash of titans, NaVi will surely be looking to take their revenge versus ‘apeX’ and co. and also aim for the Intel Grand Slam, becoming the third team after Astralis in 2018 and Team Liquid in 2019 to bag the title and the $1,000,000 prize pool to boot.
This would be the third final on the trot for Valeriy ‘B1T’ Vakhovskiy ever since he joined the roster, while the rookie on the other side Jayson Nguyen ‘Kyojin’ Van will be playing his first ever tier 1 final.
The winner of ESL Pro League will take home $195,000 in prize money as well as a spot in the BLAST Premier World Final 2021. If Natus Vincere do manage to take the crown, they’ll also take the $1 million prize that comes with the Intel Grand Slam.
Will ‘s1mple’ reign supreme as he has been all year, or will ‘ZywOo’ take the cake this time? Only one way to find out, at the ESL Pro League Season 14 Grand Final.
