ZywOo vs. s1mple: A clash of titans to start the Legends Stage

The two best players in the world are set to go head-to-head in their opening games of the Legends Stage of IEM Rio.

Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut and Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev are names synonymous with unparalleled skill and unrivalled talent. The two juggernauts of the game will square off in the server on Saturday, hundreds of thousands of fans eagerly watching as they kick off their teams' respective campaigns through the Legends Stage of the IEM Rio Major.

The two heavyweights have been locked in a heated battle for the title of the best player in the world, having a duopoly on the No. 1 spot over the past four years. However, in the three years since ZywOo's emergence, the pair have only ever gone up against each other 20 times.

One team, Vitality, is fresh off of their 3-2 run through the Challengers Stage of the IEM Rio Major, garnering much-needed experience of playing in front of the roaring Brazilian crowd. The other, Natus Vincere, is traveling to Rio de Janeiro relatively rusty, having not played an official match since nearly four weeks ago when they qualified for IEM Rio. It's an apt storyline for a Major that has already broken records, but how will the highly-anticipated matchup play out?

Date	Matches
IEM Rio Major 2022
05/11/2022	Vitality 17:45 Natus Vincere	Match

The last time ZywOo and s1mple squared off was just over two months ago at ESL Pro League Season 16. It was the highlight of Group A for the 24-team event, where the European combine narrowly prevailed with a 2-1 scoreline. Unsurprisingly, both of the teams' snipers finished atop the scoreboard; ZywOo put up a server-high 1.36 rating while his Ukrainian counterpart wasn't too far behind with an impressive 1.29 rating of his own.

Both sharpshooters are key to their rosters' successes, often being needed to record astoundingly high numbers on a consistent basis for their teams to claim comfortable victories. While Vitality and Natus Vincere have other players to fall back on, namely Emil "⁠Magisk⁠" Reif and Denis "⁠electroNic⁠" Sharipov, they fail to come close to the levels seen by the aforementioned behemoths.

On the European mixture, Magisk has posted a 1.09 rating in the past three months, a deficit of 0.28 compared to his French peer. On the Ukrainian-majority roster, things are a bit more even, where electroNic trails behind s1mple by 0.13 points with a 1.08 rating. It must be noted that s1mple has not been in peak form after the player break, while the Frenchmen's level has been inverse — he improved significantly since the summer and the addition of Lotan "⁠Spinx⁠" Giladi to Vitality.

The two rosters have already met at another Valve-sponsored event: the quarter-finals of the PGL Stockholm Major. Natus Vincere were well and truly in their element at the time, brushing past their foes with three one-sided victories on their way to a playoff spot. The then all-French lineup of Vitality had a more troubled run through the Swiss stage, advancing to the playoffs with yet another 3-2 record, where they needed all three maps to eke past Entropiq in the playoff-qualifying matchup.

Their highly-scrutinised game, which had over 1,300,000 peak viewers, was a true bloodbath, one where Natus Vincere narrowly got the better of their competition, winning Dust2 16-11 and Nuke 16-13. ZywOo once again led the charge for his team with a team-high 1.15 rating and 44-40 K-D. The Frenchman was instrumental in letting his team put up a fight against the Russian-Ukrainian onslaught, a side that would eventually go on to win the Major outright.

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s1mple wasn't the top dog in this series, being overshadowed by an in-form Ilya "⁠Perfecto⁠" Zalutskiy. Regardless, the Ukrainian superstar still managed a strong 1.25 rating to secure his team the much-needed victory. Moreover, while this particular game was on the quiet side for s1mple's standards, the event itself wasn't; he went nuclear all tournament long, sitting at the top of the food chain with an incomprehensible 1.47 rating to earn the Major MVP medal.

But Counter-Strike is a team game, so how do the two squads match up result-wise? Vitality may have their most recent win at ESL Pro League Season 16 in their arsenal, but it's Natus Vincere that has an edge here, too, with 13 wins from the 20 matches played against Vitality since 2019.

In 2022, where the two teams have faced off four times, s1mple and company have clinched victory on three occasions. What's more, in those three losses for the European combine, they have failed to secure even one map victory. On the contrary, Natus Vincere made Vitality work exceptionally hard to clinch their ESL Pro League victory (10-16, 16-14, 16-12).

This makes the upcoming game between Natus Vincere and Vitality one to watch. ZywOo's form in the past three months has been remarkable and more deadly than s1mple's. He also enjoys having the experience of the stage in Brazil, and enters the next phase of play as one of the best performers so far.

s1mple is in a different boat; he makes the trip to Rio de Janeiro without an official under his belt in a little over a month. He has also had a dip in form compared to the first half of the year, something that could easily come back to bite the Ukrainian-majority lineup.

While going up against the second-best player of 2021 and the No.2 team in the world will always be tough, past meetings between the two teams show that Natus Vincere and s1mple are in prime position to get the upper hand; for it to go the other way, Vitality will require ZywOo to excel once again.