EliGE: "There's still a bit of a disconnect between us in the game [...] that's our big challenge to be able to win"

The North-American rifler sat down to talk about Liquid after a win and a loss in the team's opening day at the Major.

Liquid started their run at the Major with a loss to Dmitry "⁠hooch⁠" Bogdanov's Entropiq, a bump in the road as the Russian squad decided to play Vertigo, an unexpected map for Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski and company, before taking down the Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer-led ENCE on Dust2 to even out the record.

EliGE sat down to discuss all things Liquid, from the team's bootcamp and preparation before flying to Sweden, to some of the key moments in their first day at the Major and the hurdles the team will need to overcome in order to have a shot at winning the $2 million event. "We need to figure out how to be on the same page in the game," the 24-year-old says, "it's a recurring thing, everyone's been saying it, we've been saying it, the analysts have been saying it, but honestly it's a really hard thing to fix."

You went back to the US to play the final RMR tournament, then you came back and bootcamped in Holland. How have things gone for you guys before coming to Sweden?

Since the BLAST Showdown we've had pretty good practice, we've done really well in scrimms and the atmosphere is much better than before the Showdown. It's been pretty hard with all of the travel this year, it's been pretty difficult to travel literally 80% of the year, but right now I think this is about as good as it's going to get for us.

What has the bootcamp been like, was it very intense,or more relaxed? What was the atmosphere like during your time of preparation?

I'd say it's been pretty intense. We started our day at noon to get food and then we had four or five scrimms pretty much every day and most days ended at nine or 10. There hasn't been much time to do pretty much anything else, so I'd say it's been pretty intense the whole time.

Coming into the Major how do you feel compared to the other teams in the field?

I think we're a bit less in form compared to other teams, especially those that were recently playing in the previous stage. We expected to do a bit better with us losing the way we did earlier, we're not as good as we could be and Entropiq beat us a little bit in the vetoes. We were a little bit blindsided because we thought it was going to be between Nuke and Overpass and they'd pick Nuke, so that kind of caught us by surprise.

We still had enough time to prepare but it was just that mental thing of thinking it would be Nuke and it ending up being Vertigo. We had enough prep time, like I said, but it just threw a wrench in the gears for us. Aside from that I think we're not at our full level, there are still a lot of easy misscomms and a little over eagerness in certain situations so I think we could be doing better than what we've shown.

Did it maybe take you guys a minute to get situated here?

Not really for me, as soon as I sat down to play Entropiq in the first game I felt right at home. As the game went on I could kind of feel some uneasiness, which kind of went on in the whole team, like we weren't fully prepared. Individually, I feel just as I would in any other tournament in the past and it feels good to be in the studio again and playing on LAN. The setup is pretty good.

This is Grim's first Major, his second big LAN, is that affecting him at all? Have you talked to him at all about it or did you notice anything?

Honestly, I don't feel like he's overly nervous or making mistakes that are from nervousness, at least not from what I've seen. He doesn't give off that vibe. We've given him some tips on the best settings or how to feel like it's the same as when we're practicing or stuff like that, but I don't feel like he's affected. At least in my opinion, maybe from his perspective he is, but I haven't seen anything that makes me feel like this is a different Mike than the one I'm used to playing with.

One thing that is different is that adreN is not here, can you run me through how that has affected the team? Have you made adjustments at all?

In terms of preparation we were with him the entire bootcamp, he left on the same day that we did and we just haven't had him for the past three days. We've been talking to him here and there before the games, talking about the prep work, but it definitely has felt a lot different.

When you're in the practice room most people want to have their headsets off and to talk about the game in person, so doing the extra steps to get into Discord and talk about it hasn't been as fluid as it should have been. We're not doing as good as we could to keep on having a steady process with him not being here and I think that has affected us in some instances of our game.

How about on the server itself? Anything you've noticed or not so much?

We've only played two games so far and in the first one he would have probably called a timeout and given us a better idea of what we should be doing or had a better adjustment. I don't think that we had enough going on in the first game to fix what was actually happening.

We played pretty well in the second game and we had a good plan so I think that we would have just stuck to it and it would have been smooth sailing. But in the first one... you can definitely feel that he's not here, especially for me.

One of the things that comes to mind to me when thinking about Liquid is that there are a lot of people with strong ideas and a lot of voices. Is that something you've been working on?

In terms of outside of the game stuff we're all pretty on point regarding what we think if we go over a game plan, everyone's on the same page. But I feel like in the game there still isn't a definitive flow to each round, a lot of times one person will say something and another person will make a slight adjustment to it but then doesn't complete the whole picture so it gets messed up and we end up looking pretty silly.

There's still a bit of a disconnect between us in the game and we really haven't figure out something to fix that, to be completely honest, I think that's our big challenge to be able to win here.

The way I see the tournament is that NAVI is the big favorite, but then the field behind them is kind of open, there are a lot of teams right behind. So if NAVI trips, that really opens up the field. Do you agree with that and how do you see it playing out for Liquid?

I don't think it's a clear cut thing like NAVI is for sure going to win. They are the favorites, but Gambit is also a favorite. If we do tiers of favorites NAVI is the highest tier, but the tier under is not that far away, there are a couple of teams looking for the title, as well, and they're pretty close. I'd put us maybe like two tiers below in terms of what we're expecting and what we can do at our current level.

Like I said before, we need to figure out how to be on the same page in the game, it's a recurring thing, everyone's been saying it, we've been saying it, the analysts have been saying it, but honestly it's a really hard thing to fix because when one person thinks we should play out a situation this way and another person wants to do it another way then it's really hard to fix that because people feel very strongly about their opinions.

It'll be hard and that first game showed that, there were a couple of instances of that happening and we ended up not looking too good, but in this ENCE game we all had a game plan and we stuck to it the whole time and it just kind of flowed the entire way. That's the kind of game in which we look good, but if we had any big hurdle that we had to climb, it would have been tough.

First day here at the Major for you, I suppose you've been watching the Challengers Stage as well. Any standout moments, teams, players, anything that has surprised you?

Entropiq is actually playing super good, and Copenhagen Flames are playing very well, like a lot of people are saying. For Copenhagen Flames, it's not like they're just getting fluke wins or anything, they're playing really solid throughout the whole entire round. Spirit was a big surprise to not play as well as I expected them to and to not make it to the next stage.

To close things out, can you give me a bit of the key moments from your first games?

Yeah, in the first game against Entropiq we started super well and it felt really flowey for the first couple of rounds, but then after that there was a very clear over eagerness and we threw away a couple of advantages. We didn't really have a clear answer to how they were waiting out our smokes, they studied us pretty well and they saw how often we were re-throwing our smokes on A. They totally just waited for that, waited until 30 seconds and then they were just double-mollying, right side smoke and coming up on us.

We've actually not played against that in a very long time, that used to be a very common situation to be in back in the day, but it hasn't been the Vertigo we've been playing against in practice here in Europe. We've been here for a while and haven't been playing against it, so it was pretty tough, it was kind of like a shock.

It happened twice on two important gun rounds and that kind of ruined our whole CT side, not knowing how to deal with that strategy. On the terrorist side we kind of just flopped the whole game, T sides have been tough not just for us but for every team, the M4A1-S meta has affected a lot of teams and you're seeing a lot of heavy CT-sided games.

We've played ENCE in some practice games before and we saw how they were playing, they had some pretty recent Dust2 games and we knew the veto was going to go to Dust2. We knew how aggressive they were going to be in mid and I think we had a pretty good answer for their mid pushes and mid aggression. We had a pretty solid T-side from that and on our CT side I think they really just couldn't get anything going at all.

One last question to wrap things up, I noticed you say you're being over eager. Could you expand a bit on that?

I'd say that it's just trying to be too fast to try and find an answer and executing that answer before it can work, pretty much. You understand what they're doing, you try to figure out a solution really quick and then you go straight into that solution, whereas you need to take it more patiently.

A lot of these teams that have been playing really well, the rookie teams that surprised in the Challenger Stage, I think they have been very patient and playing really well, like Entropiq and Copenhagen Flames, they're very patient in a lot of situations and they've been punishing a lot of mistakes.

That's what we need to do, I could feel it on the Vertigo game, we were too quick to try and figure out answers and just instantly either peek or try to adjust a strategy that we're trying to assume the solution when we should be waiting and then reacting to what they're doing and punishing whatever mistakes they're making. That's what we've been missing out the most.