NAF: "We had the experience edge over OG"

Liquid have a chance to lift hardware before the end of the year at the BLAST Premier World Final.

Liquid have a shot at the title in Abu Dhabi, UAE, where they beat OG in the BLAST Premier World Final semi-finals to secure a berth in the final. The North Americans have been fairly consistent in reaching playoffs throughout the year, and will now have another shot at a title before the end of 2022 after losing out to Vitality at ESL Pro League.

Keith "⁠NAF⁠" Markovic took some time to share his thoughts in the Etihad Arena's mixed zone after Liquid's victory, where he spoke about the team's semi-final victory, his feelings on the new map added to the pool, Anubis, and his hopes for the tournament's grand final. "Twistzz kicked my ass last time, so hopefully I can kick his ass next time and have a little Canadian battle," NAF joked. "But G2 has also been playing phenomenal, so let's just wait and see."

You made the grand final! Did you expect to make it to the big match at the last event of the year?

Yeah, with OG being in the semis it made us really confident. Not because they're a bad team or anything, we just believe that they're more inexperienced and we believe that we had the experience edge. I do believe we have the better players, but at the end of the day they just lacked a lot of experience. We saw it on Anubis, at the very end, I feel like they didn't understand a lot of things during the mid-round and just started to crumble mentally towards the end.

They came out strong on Overpass, our pick, we believe we could do better on that one. They were playing well and confident straight out of the gate. They had a lot of good timings and good reads at times, a lot of us were getting pretty frustrated because they were catching us off-guard. That was maybe a bit of luck on their side, but then again, you create your own luck and that's what they did, and they did very well on Overpass. They didn't go into the game shy to play.

On Inferno we realized we had to bounce back and we were confident that we weren't going to lose 0-2 to OG. We just needed to keep up with what we were doing. They had their Overpass, good for them, and we just needed to bounce back and keep going — so that's what we did.

Anubis is a map that's brand new with no set meta, so how confident can you be going into it as the decider?

We're really confident on it, we have really good ideas on how to play it and we have great players for the map. YEKINDAR is aggressive in the middle water areas, and EliGE can be aggressive in the middle bridge area, so I believe that we were confident going into it. Me, personally, I feel pretty confident on the map, individually. As a team it showed in the end, maybe there was a bit of lack of experience for OG in a position like this at a big tournament semi-finals and having to play this third map. I think we just had more experience and the better mental game going into it.

You had a very good Anubis, individually. Is it a map that you think you're going to be a strong player on?

Yeah, I like to see new things and I don't want to see too many recycled maps, although I do wish they could bring back some of them! It's nice to see something new, and I think the map is very nice, I just think some changes need to be made on it. Especially the B bomb site. There aren't too many places to play, so you'll probably see a lot of teams pop there to catch players off guard. There's not a lot of positions that players can hold, get multi-kills, and fall back. They kind of have to be in there shooting and trading. So yeah, I feel pretty confident on the map individually. It's just the beginning for Anubis and I guess we'll just see going into next year.

You've consistently made playoff finishes and now you have a chance to lift a trophy. It's a bit of a weird moment with a void of dominant championship teams. Can you go all the way now?

Yeah, of course. I think the big thing for us throughout the year, especially with getting YEKINDAR, is that we've been super consistent at having decent results whereas some teams may have good events and then lose in the group stages. Besides the Major, of course, which was the biggest blow for us, every other event has been really consistent. We've had really good placings. I believe that right now, with this lineup, everything is going according to how we're planning it and how we see it.

Initially, when we had shox, it was a bit harder with the roles and the ideas and EliGE feeling a bit more uncomfortable. It wasn't really working as well as we thought it would. Bringing in YEKINDAR, on paper you can see that the roles are more distinguished. He's the aggressive guy, and then EliGE can also be aggressive and follow him up and trade him. oSee is a phenomenal up-and-coming AWPer, and nitr0 and me just have to do our jobs on the extremities. nitr0 has to do his calling and I have to find some impact. Luckily today I was able to find that impact on the third map to put up a good performance and help the team push it over the line.

If FaZe win the second semi-final, will there a bit of hunger for revenge in the grand final?

Yeah, of course! Twistzz kicked my ass last time, so hopefully I can kick his ass next time and have a little Canadian battle. It was unfortunate to lose to them in the group stage, we do believe that we had a close game against them and that we can beat these guys. They weren't light years ahead of us, so I can't wait for a rematch.

But G2 has also been playing phenomenal, so let's just wait and see, although hopefully I can get my sweet revenge over Twistzz! But jokes aside, I love that kid. If there's any guy that I want to beat me, it would be him, although hopefully he'll allow me to win a few times! We'll see, we'll see... We'll try our best!