daps: "YEKINDAR is teaching the guys a lot and I'm learning a lot from him"

In a quick comment following Liquid's qualification for the playoffs at IEM Cologne, Damian "⁠daps⁠" Steele praised Mareks "⁠YEKINDAR⁠" Gaļinskis's for his role in the run.

After months of struggles, Liquid have finally gotten their first big break since revamping the lineup at the beginning of the year after they bolstered the team with a stand-in and possible trial player, YEKINDAR, just in time for IEM Cologne.

In Germany, the new-look Liquid have made it to the playoffs after a hard-fought campaign that saw them make a comeback run through the Group B lower bracket with consecutive wins against 00NATION, Cloud9, and FURIA, and are set on a collision course with Movistar Riders in the quarter-finals.

Over the past week the North American squad has been speaking highly of the Latvian star for the input he has given them, and YEKINDAR himself spoke to HLTV earlier on the topic saying that he has been helping the team catch up to the current meta and putting in a lot of work despite this potentially being only a temporary deal.

HLTV has also had the chance to talk to another recent addition to the Liquid team, daps, to get his thoughts on how YEKINDAR has helped free up Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski and contributed to the team in general in their first run to the playoffs this year.

First of all, it's been a pretty hard-fought run in general here in Cologne, you guys have made it through to the playoffs. Initial reaction?

I'm kind of lost for words, a little bit. Super excited, but also I knew we could do it if we could keep our mental good just like we had in scrims prior too. It feels amazing.

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Again, a hard-fought win here against FURIA, another win in overtime - you had the chance to close out in regulation against a low buy and it didn't work out, so talk me through that last stretch of rounds and how you managed to close it out on Mirage.

I think that's the third time we've been up 15-13 and it went to OT, so we're having a little bit of trouble closing out games, but it's something that's expected with the lack of time we've had, and there's a lot of small things like not watching flanks and getting killed. It happened in the Spirit game, it happened when saffee flanked and killed all four of us in a 4v2, so there's just a lot of small things that are missing, I'd say, but that's just because of a lack of practice.

EliGE had an amazing game, and in general he's having a great tournament. He's had some off tournaments lately and I know you've only just joined and can't really speak to that, but how much do you think YEKINDAR coming in and creating more space for him has helped him out in terms of his performance?

I think YEKINDAR not only role-wise has helped EliGE find sort of a new-ish role that maybe fits his playstyle or gives him a break a little bit from what he was doing before, but I also think in terms of his voice in the team has been pretty amazing so far.

I played with a lot of players in my career, but the fact that he's standing in and he's already taken charge, to an extent, and he's teaching the guys a lot, I'm learning a lot from him, and we're just combining the style he used to play with how Liquid was playing before, we're kinda just meshing it together and it's working out so far.

Moving on to the playoffs, you've already made it far considering Liquid's run as of late, is this kind of a no-pressure situation now, whatever happens, happens?

I wouldn't say it's no pressure, obviously, because Liquid is an organization that expects winning tournaments. It's definitely not a no-pressure situation, regardless of that we could use the excuse of a lack of practice, but the reality is that if we're on our A game and our emotions and mentality stay strong we can challenge any team here.