French Counter-Strike superstar Mathieu "ZywOo" Herbaut was declared the best player in 2023 at the HLTV Awards 2023 ceremony, which took place last night in the capital of Serbia.
After two years in second place, ZywOo returned to the top spot he held in 2019 and 2020, tying Alexander "s1mple" Kostyliev for the number of HLTV titles won.
There was no doubt who would take home the title of the best this year after ZywOo won five MVP titles including the best player award at the BLAST Paris Major where he lifted the final CS:GO Major trophy in front of his home crowd and wrote another page of history in his glittering career. .
For a time, Nikola "NiKo" Kovach managed to keep up with the Frenchman and make the race for the top spot interesting, but Nikola's drop in form after CS2 came out and two titles for Vitality and ZywOoa made too much of a difference to question who was the best in the year that is behind us.
How dominant ZywOo was is best shown by the fact that he did not take home the MVP/EVP title in only one major tournament out of 11 that Vitality played last year.
It was IEM Sydney 2023, the first major CS2 LAN, a tournament where Vitality was eliminated at the very start after two straight losses, and ZyWoo achieved a 1.12 rating and a pretty solid 81.1 damage per round.
There were signs that ZywOo, like many players, would have trouble getting used to the new version of the game, but ZywOo silenced all critics in the next two tournaments.
Vitality dominated the BLAST Fall and BLAST World Finals despite playing with a new lineup, and ZywOo showed an incredible level of dominance with 1.35 and 1.41 ratings in the last two major tournaments of the year.
In addition to the award for the best player, he was also named the best AWPer of the past year, as well as the best clutch situation, and his team won the award for the best team of 2023, which rounded off a truly spectacular year for Vitality, which started from dreams by winning the Major in their homeland, but they did not stop there but continued to achieve success.
