Here Is Why NAVI No Longer Buys Players and Is Focusing on Homegrown Talents
The NAVI Junior CS:GO coach had some important insights to offer.
The WePlay Academy League Season 1 recently came to an end. One of the teams participating in this tournament was Natus Vincere (NAVI) Junior, who sadly could not make it through the Online Stage. Their coach, Amiran "ami" Rekhviashvili who has been with the lineup since May 2019, recently gave some insights about how NAVI is planning on recruiting future CS:GO talents for their main roster, during an interview with WePlay. Ami further highlighted why the academy program was so important for NAVI, and its philosophy of educating players rather than buying them for the main CS:GO roster.
NAVI Junior CS:GO coach talks about the importance of the academy team
The coach of the NAVI academy roster recently revealed why this project was important for the Ukrainian esports organization. He says that NAVI Junior is given all the necessary resources to bring the best out of their players.
NAVI Junior is an important project in our organization, so a lot of effort and a lot of people are focused on it.Amiran "ami" Rekhviashvili - Interview with WePlay
Ami went on to speak about the 'Road to NAVI' project through which players from the academy team get a chance to move up to the active roster. This is what NAVI is actually focused upon, their big plan being not to buy players for their active roster and instead, promote homegrown talent that have progressed through their academy program.
We invest our strength and resources in this direction. That's right on our part. Young people are our future, and there is no point in buying players if we can educate them ourselves.Amiran "ami" Rekhviashvili - Interview with WePlay
The 34-year-old Ukrainian coach further explained that another reason why NAVI does not prefer to purchase players is because when NAVI comes on the table to buy a player, the price tag automatically jumps up to three times.
Last CS:GO player that NAVI had purchased was in January 2020 when it had acquired Ilya "Perfecto" Zalutskiy from Kazakhstani esports organization, Syman Gaming. He had replaced Ladislav "GuardiaN" Kovács on the active CS:GO roster.
Ami goes on to talk about a lot of other things related to NAVI Junior and the plans around the organization's academy program. With talent like Ilya "m0NESY" Osipov as part of the academy roster who is touted as the future Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev, the NAVI Junior roster looks promising.
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