NAVI to play with sdy at BLAST Premier Spring Finals

NAVI have announced that they will attend the upcoming BLAST Premier Spring Finals event with Viktor ‘sdy’ Orudzhev as a stand-in.

The former Team Spirit and MAD Lions player will fill in for Kirill ‘Boombl4’ Mikhailov, who was removed from the starting lineup on May 28 due to what the organization described as “high reputational risks for the club”.

This is understood to be a reference to controversial social media posts made by Boombl4’s wife in which she appeared to show support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Dexerto revealed on May 31 that NAVI have been monitoring the situation of Virtus.pro benched player Timur ‘buster’ Tulepov. For a move to come to fruition, however, the Kazakhstani player will have to be released from his contract as NAVI refuse to conduct business with Virtus.pro, a Russian organization with alleged Kremlin ties.

In response to the article, Virtus.pro issued a statement in which they rejected the possibility of letting any of their players leave “unless a proper fee is paid”.

Who is sdy?

sdy, also known as somedieyoung, is a Ukrainian player who burst onto the international scene in 2018 as part of Team Spirit. He attended a number of international events with that team, including the CS:GO Majors in London (2018), Katowice (2019) and Stockholm (2021).

In November 2021, he found himself on Spirit’s bench as the team underwent a rebuilding process after a series of mixed results. Two months later, he was transferred to MAD Lions, but his time there was short-lived: in April, OverActive Media shut down the CSGO team – a decision that came amid the release of the company’s financial results for 2021, which included a net loss of $15.4m, compared to $5m for 2020.

sdy will make his NAVI debut on June 15, against the new-look OG side in the opening round of the BLAST Premier Spring Finals’ Group B, which also includes BIG and ENCE.

According to NAVI, sdy could remain with the team beyond the event in Lisbon depending “on his performance in the upcoming tournament.”

It remains unclear who will be leading the team after Boombl4’s removal, but NAVI COO Alexey ‘xaoc’ Kucherov told Dexerto that there is a strong possibility that Denis ‘electroNic⁠’ Sharipov will be the new in-game leader.

NAVI’s BLAST Premier Spring Finals roster:

• Aleksandr ‘⁠s1mple⁠’ Kostyliev
• Denis ‘electroNic⁠’ Sharipov
• Ilya ‘⁠Perfecto⁠’ Zalutskiy
• Valeriy ‘b1t’ Vakhovskiy
• Viktor ‘sdy’ Orudzhev