NAVI beat G2 2-0 to open ESL Pro League Season 24

Natus Vincere opened ESL Pro League Season 24 with a 2-0 win over G2 on October 3, taking Cache 13-7 and Inferno 13-4. The result gave Aleksib’s team a needed reset after a stretch in which wins had been hard to come by.

It was NAVI’s fourth match win of the season and their first in 35 days. Andrey “B1ad3” Gorodenskiy’s team had fallen to No. 32 in the VRS after finishing 9-16th at EWC, 9-12th at BLAST Open Porto and last at StarSeries Fall.

That run pushed them outside the invite cut-off for PGL Major Singapore. With that in mind, their results at ESL Pro League Season 24 and PGL Masters Bucharest carry extra weight if the organization is going to avoid missing a Major for the first time in its history.

Pressure has built after a rough run

From the outside, the team’s situation has looked increasingly tense. NAVI missed the playoffs at IEM Cologne, entered the second half of the year without making changes and arrived at Pro League after struggling to find traction in their recent events. Mihai “iM” Ivan said after the match that the group had not felt that pressure in the same way internally.

“Obviously we had a rough start to the season, and I think it looks… overall, in my opinion, it doesn’t look that bad because we’ve had rough starts to the season before,” iM said on the broadcast after the match.

He pointed to the Cologne setback, the one-month break and the two or three tournaments that followed as part of why the opening stretch has looked so rough. In his view, the team’s position on the VRS table matters less than whether NAVI can keep winning the matches in front of them.

“I do not have any pressure because of that,” iM said. “Only because if we are good, or decent enough we for sure will make the Major no matter what.”

That outlook matched the way NAVI approached the series. Their map pool has been a talking point since the break, and their decision to start on Cache suggested the month off was used to tighten things up. The first half of the opener was messy, but the rest of the map shifted firmly in their favour.

Cache swings after a shaky start

NAVI began Cache 1-5 down, but the early deficit did not last long. From there they gave up only two more rounds, took over the map and closed it 13-7 through cleaner teamplay and better trading across the board.

G2 never fully recovered from that turnaround. Once NAVI found rhythm, the map tilted steadily in their direction, and the control they established in the middle rounds kept G2 from putting together any sustained pressure late on.

The opener also fit the broader story of NAVI’s return to form. They had been punished repeatedly for slow starts in recent weeks, but this time they absorbed the opening punch and kept the game from slipping away. The shift was not dramatic in one round or one player; it came from a more stable collective approach after the first stretch.

Cache mattered too because it set the tone for the rest of the series. G2 could not turn its early lead into anything lasting, while NAVI’s structure started to show once the first few rounds were out of the way. By the end of the map, the difference between the two teams had become clear.

Inferno ends as a one-sided finish

On Inferno, G2’s map pick, NAVI looked even sharper. Valeriy “b1t” Vakhovskiy, iM and Ihor “w0nderful” Zhdanov were described as nigh-unstoppable as G2’s attack fell apart at almost every turn.

NAVI kept forcing G2 into uncomfortable rounds and rarely let the defense settle. The result was a 13-4 finish that ended the series without the need for a decider and underlined how quickly the match had moved out of G2’s reach once Inferno got underway.

Nemanja “huNter-” Kovač had a particularly rough map. The report said it was the second-worst map of his career, with the G2 player going 0-11 on the T side and finishing on a 1-15 kill-death line with a 0.19 rating.

That stat line captured the broader shape of the map. G2’s offence never found a foothold, and once NAVI established control, there was little sign of a response. The difference in output between the two teams became wider as the rounds went on, and the final score reflected that gap.

For NAVI, the win offers a cleaner start to ESL Pro League Season 24 after a messy run through the first half of the year. It also gives them a result they can carry into the next stages of the Major race, where the margin for error remains tight because of the points they still need to recover.

The series was also a direct reply to recent disappointment. After BLAST Open Porto, this was the kind of performance NAVI needed: a solid map on their own pick, then a sharp close on the opponent’s choice. It did not erase the problems built up over the past month, but it showed the team can still produce a clear result when the schedule starts to tighten.

NAVI now move deeper into ESL Pro League Season 24 with momentum from a match they had to have. The 2-0 win over G2 stopped the slide, restored some confidence and put Aleksib’s team in a stronger spot at the start of the group stage.