According to the results of the IEM Cologne 2022 tournament, which ended on June 17, the MVP title went to Alexander «s1mple» Kostylev despite the fact that his team finished the competition in second place. For the Natus Vincere player, this is the twenty-first MVP medal in the – collection and the second this year. He won the previous one less than a month ago at the BLAST Premier Spring Final, thus breaking the record for the most individual awards. This is also the third time s1mple has won the IEM Cologne MVP title: he previously won the MVP title at the tournament in 2018 and 2021.
S1mple showed impressive play throughout the tournament. His average rating across all matches was 1.25, and in some games it was even higher – e.g. 1.36 in the match against MOUZ in the group stage. Of course, he hit the top of the leaderboard in other metrics such as number of headshots and number of clutches won. Even before the grand finals began, s1mple was the main contender for the MVP title, while his closest rival remained Benjamin «blameF» Bremer of Astralis. Despite the fact that FaZe defeated the Ukrainian team in the final, none of its players could come close to the level of s1mple in terms of individual indicators.