In a video posted on NAVI’s YouTube channel, coach Andrey ‘B1ad3’ Gorodenskiy has announced that Viktor ‘sdy’ Orudzhev will remain in the team as a stand-in.

 His stand-in period will extend until the end of the next Major cycle, culminating in the IEM Rio Major 2021. It will also include BLAST Premier Fall, as well as ESL Pro League Season 16.

The team has had good results with sdy, something B1ad3 noted in the video. They have won BLAST Premier Spring Finals and came second at IEM Cologne 2022 since he joined the team.

So why has the position not been made a permanent one? B1ad3 offered some insight:

“That’s why we decided it makes sense to keep going with him as a stand-in, giving him a chance to prove himself even more since he’s making a lot of mistakes and he’s not fully comfortable in the game.”

Andrey ‘B1ad3’ Gorodenskiy

It seems NAVI is still hopeful that sdy will be able to rectify some of these mistakes however, as B1ad3 continued to say: “The idea is to make him reveal more of his potential and get comfortable. We’ll see how he does going forward.”

sdy joined the team after its former IGL Kirill“boobml4” Mikhaylov abruptly had his tenure cut short due to “high reputational risks”. 

B1ad3’s statements about the Ukrainian have some merit, as sdy has only so far achieved a 0.98 HLTV rating, however, this hasn’t stopped NAVI from still being one of the top 2 teams in the world, alongside FaZe Clan.