oSee: "For now YEKINDAR's just a stand-in, but we'll see"

Liquid's AWPer gave details about the team's match against Spirit, as well as playing with Mareks "⁠YEKINDAR⁠" Gaļinskis during Cologne.

After six months of play with their revamped lineup, Liquid finally decided to make a change following many under-performances during the year. The move saw the departures of both Richard "⁠shox⁠" Papillon and coach Eric "⁠adreN⁠" Hoag, with Canadian veteran Damian "⁠daps⁠" Steele coming in to take the reigns of coach.

Due to the limited time until the IEM Cologne roster lock, the North American squad looked for a stand-in to fill shox's shoes for the event. In a surprise move, they secured YEKINDAR on a loan agreement with Virtus.pro. Despite grabbing such a strong stand-in, the team still had limited practice and were working to integrate a new coach, making it hard to have high expectations for the German tournament.

We spoke with Josh "⁠oSee⁠" Ohm after Liquid's opening match against Spirit to discuss what went wrong on the third map as well as the 23-year-old's thoughts on working with YEKINDAR.

This series had kind of a nightmarish end, but it definitely was an exciting one from the outside. We have to go through Ancient - you guys almost pulled off that massive comeback, but couldn't pull through in the end in overtime. Talk me through that map and how much of an emotional rollercoaster it was.

It was definitely really hard. The spirits were really high when we were making the comeback and when it was 15-12 or something, 15-13, we all thought "we got this in the bag." It goes to OT and we're like "we still got this." There was a lot of unfortunate rounds in OT and when that happens, it's really hard to be level headed. Even though it is what you should be, it's pretty hard in those moments.

They played a really good game. I think we struggled to adapt to what they were doing towards the end of the OT. They were slowing down the rounds a lot. We were trying to shut down mid, which we were able to, but then they would retake it with a lot of numbers towards middle and they would take that control back. Then once we lost that control, we just played the rounds out incorrectly I think. It was definitely a tough loss, but I think there is a lot to learn from it for sure.

You mentioned some of those close rounds, there was like a five second bomb plant on A as nitr0 died six seconds before the time ran out, then there was the one 1v2 where YEKINDAR was the last guy alive, not being able to pull off the 1v1. Was that difficult to keep composure after that point to try and close it out?

Yeah, definitely. Honestly, I definitely felt frustrated after the rounds, but in the rounds I don't think it really affected us too much, but of course that's just from my standpoint, it definitely could have affected us. The spirits were definitely a lot lower in OT when we were losing those rounds. It's something we've got to work on I guess.

I wanted to talk about YEKINDAR. He came in last minute for you guys to step in for Cologne. What's your impression of him first of all? An initial take.

He's super smart about the game. He is basically a really strong voice mid rounds, even in the beginning of rounds he will bring up a lot of good ideas. Mechanically he is very gifted. Just overall he is a really good player, so it's really nice to have him as a stand-in for this event.

I don't know how much you guys practiced together, but he has a lot of experience from Outsiders, a very different team to you guys, and just generally playing at a really high level for quite a while now. Is there something about him that he brings that you just didn't have before, that you didn't really think of before having that different perspective?

For sure, he brought a lot of stuff that they used to do on Outsiders and brought it up to us. I know we've been trying to implement a little bit of that stuff. He is very good at reading the opponents I think. He is always adamant about countering how many smokes they have and making a plan based around that, and that's stuff that we didn't really do in the past.

He's just really good macro-wise, like he can basically predict where the players are going to be based on what nades they throw, where they push. So he's very smart, very quick thinking, and honestly a really great player and I can tell why he's known as one of the best players in the world.

From what I got from some of the answers you guys gave in one of the press conferences or something like that, people seem to be kind of hyped up to be playing alongside a guy like that, especially because of accountability and him putting in so much work, because he is probably one of the hardest working players in the scene. Is that something that affects the rest of the team when you see a player like this?

Oh yeah, he literally wakes up, talks about CS, grinds CS, probably still thinks about CS in his sleep. He's always grinding and it honestly motivates me to put in a lot more work too, to become like how he is at the moment. The player he is now, it shows with all the hard work.

It's just nice to see that he does really care about being one of the best and he wants to make our team one of the best, if things do end up where he does join the team. For now he's just a stand-in, but we'll see. I'm super happy to be able to even bootcamp with him for a week, I learned a lot just from playing with him. It's been nice, I hope it keeps going.

How much can you say about his future and potentially staying on with Liquid? You mentioned it there. Is there a possibility that could happen if things go well?

Nothing's for sure at the moment, but he's definitely been fitting in pretty well as a stand-in. We'll see. Hopefully.

Going into the rest of Cologne, you guys dropped to the lower bracket. It's gonna be a pretty tough road from here if you guys want to make it deep. After a loss I know you guys are probably pretty dejected at this point, but overall looking at the tournament what kind of pressure do you guys put on yourself to make it a good result, considering the circumstances?

Honestly, coming into the tournament we were pretty confident. A lot of our practice was going really well. We were beating a lot of good teams. Of course that's still scrims and stuff, but it seemed like a good trajectory we were going towards. It's kind of tough that we lost against Spirit, I don't even know who we play next to be honest

It's the loser between 00NATION and FaZe.

Okay, it's definitely gonna be a lot tougher. It would have been nice to get a win today and then if we win one more BO3 we would make it to the playoffs, but unfortunately we can't do that. I think we can still definitely make a deep run in the tournament. As a five, we are still like ten days of practice so we can't expect too much, but at the same time we want to prove that we can still beat these teams and compete at the top. We'll see how we do in the lower bracket, but I'm pretty confident still.