Na`Vi boombl4 explains why no CSGO team can hold the top ranking

Professional CSGO teams practice day in and day out, spending hours honing their skills in scrims and on practice servers. But according to at least one pro CSGO player, there’s no way for a team to stay on top forever.

In an interview with HLTV, Natus Vincere’s Kirill “Boombl4” Mikhailov told the publication that it’s incredibly hard to achieve consistent results in a game like CSGO.

“In essence, the only team to have achieved stability was Astralis, and even then, that led to certain players experiencing burnout and taking leave as a result,” Boombl4 said. 

It’s a spot-on take from one of CSGO’s youngest in-game leaders. Both Astralis and Team Liquid, two of the best teams in the game over the past two years, have struggled with consistently brining their top game into tournaments.

Astralis and Team Liquid struggle after being ranked number one

After winning the IEM Grand Slam in record time with one of the most dominant runs in the history of Counter-Strike, Team Liquid failed to make waves at the StarLadder Berlin 2019 Major. The side has bee inconsistent ever since, only occasionally showing their peak form.

Astralis has had their own issues recently, with two of the Danish team’s star players taking medical leaves after reportedly serious cases of burnout. This follows a historic run by the side in which they won multiple Major titles and were rarely challenged for supremacy atop the CSGO rankings.

These thoughts were echoed all the way back in October 2019, when Team Liquid’s Jonathan “ELiGE” Jablonowkski cited the team’s exhaustion as the reason Liquid wouldn’t attend IEM Beijing. 

In some sports, parity between teams is achieved through drafting players or lottery systems to snag potential prospects. But in esports, there is very little in place to ensure parity beyond the constant churn of new players as rigid practice requirements and busy tournament schedules lead to burnout. CSGO in particular has seen players complain about an overly busy tournament calendar. Player breaks have been instituted to fight against the weight of the schedule, but this still hasn’t been a big enough change to prevent burnout from being a problem at the game’s top level.