NAF: "I don't want my teammates to focus on me, so I don't ask for any plays"

The Canadian rifler is intent on letting his teammates thrive.

Liquid's new superstar lineup had a slow start to their time together but has shifted into a higher gear in recent times. While it took a while for the different in-game styles to mesh for the squad, they have now made consecutive playoff appearances at IEM Chengdu and ESL Pro League Season 19.

Keith "⁠NAF⁠" Markovic says that the biggest reasons for that are the comfort level of Mareks "⁠YEKINDAR⁠" Gaļinskis and Russel "⁠Twistzz⁠" Van Dulken and Casper "⁠cadiaN⁠" Møller's adaptation to calling the shots in a star-studded roster.

After Liquid defeated FlyQuest in Malta, NAF joined HLTV to talk about the series against the Aussies, Liquid's journey in recent months, and the incoming addition of Dust2.

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First of all, congrats on the win. How did the game look from your perspective?

It was pretty good, it's what we expected in terms of the maps. We started on Mirage, which is a map that we expected them to pick, or at least one of them, so we had a lot of preparation done for that. We had a solid CT side, and then our T-side was really strong, and they didn't seem to have any answers.

That gave us a lot of confidence going into Anubis. Even though they've been playing a decent amount of Anubis, we're still confident playing it. We started off pretty good before they went on a four or five-round win streak or so, but we were able to close it out really strong in the first half. And then going into the T-side, I just think they had good reads.

We had a few misunderstandings and missed calls. But they played strong on the CT side, adapted, and found the right answers to close out Anubis in overtime. It was a bummer for us to drop Anubis, we're a little bit disappointed.

And going into Ancient, we're really confident on that map, but so are they, I know they've been picking Ancient a lot. But Ancient's been one of our better maps, especially in practice and our history so far with this roster. We were confident going into the game, were able to start off strong with the pistol round, and ended up winning a lot of the rounds pretty cleanly at the start. I think that easily could have been a 12-0 half, in my opinion.

And then going into the T-side, they started to adapt and play well on the CT side. Some of the reads that we had were wrong, but we closed it out in the end. There was one round where I definitely messed up a little bit when aliStair won the 1v2, I repeeked. If we won that round, maybe we could have closed it out a little bit sooner. But because we're so comfortable on the map with all the practice, everything was completely collected even towards the very end, and we were able to put our heads on straight to close it out.

You're playing more passive roles, less desirable ones maybe, but you're still finding a lot of impact. So at least for you individually, do you feel like you've found your role in place in this roster?

I've been doing a lot of the same types of roles for a long time now. Previously in my career when I was on the old Liquid in 2018-2019, I was definitely more of a star player and more of a rotator, a player that runs around and can find impact wherever they want and however they choose.

In the past few years, though, I've been playing a lot more anchor positions, giving up my rotator positions, and creating a lot of space for others. I don't want my teammates to focus on me, so when I'm playing on the CT side, I don't ask for any plays, and the same goes for the T side. I want a lot of the focus to just be on the players that need it the most and make Twistzz, YEKINDAR, and cadiaN comfortable. I think skullz and I need to give them space and play our anchor roles the best that we can.

Overall, I've played so many different roles and done so many different things on the T side and the CT side, that I'm comfortable with whatever the team wants me to do. I think that's just the one attribute a lot of people say I have, that I can do anything, and no matter what, even if I'm playing a site alone, I can still be really good and very impactful.

I spoke to you at BLAST Groups where you told me that you have to be Liquid and not FaZe or HEROIC. Do you feel like you're finally getting there? Because your last showings at Chengdu and EPL are certainly an uptick in form.

When I talked to you at BLAST, we were still learning a lot about ourselves and how we need to be as a team. Over time, I think the biggest improvement is just having YEKINDAR and Twistzz be more impactful in terms of what they want in the game, have more ideas, and just be more comfortable with what they want to do.

When cadiaN was in HEROIC, he was very used to micromanaging, constantly calling the shots, and even taking care of the micromovements of players at times. And when you look at our team compared to HEROIC, you have more star players, more impactful players just as individuals. So I think Casper needed to learn to give more freedom to his teammates and trust in them, so that he doesn't have to be the hero AWPer with all the hero calls.

You saw that a lot when he was on HEROIC, making those big plays with the AWP and doing everything himself pretty much. So far it's just been about Casper understanding his players and for people to meet in the middle ground. That's the biggest thing we've tried to improve on over the past couple of months.

We had a lot of failures, and I think a lot of those were because we tried to understand how we could be efficient as a team. There were always a lot of holes and gaps that we just completely missed or didn't understand at times, in terms of which way would be the right way forward.

Everybody's been improving and doing a good job on that, I'm really happy with my teammates, they are doing well and they're improving throughout this event. So I'm pretty confident, but we have more things to work on for sure, we just need to keep working.

I'd like to ask about your early struggles. Because this is like a team made out of superstar names, did that give you some extra pressure that you needed to work through?

With the team coming together, I think we all had very high expectations of us to at least start stronger out of the gate. When we first started, we failed to qualify for Chengdu versus M80, and then obviously lost at the RMR. With the high expectations that we had and failing at those tournaments, that's when maybe the pressure started to settle in on us.

I believe that it's very difficult to form a team together and instantly be good. I think you could have done that way back in the day, especially with old teams like FaZe, when they just brought on olof and GuardiaN and were instantly successful, but it's a lot more difficult now, and our team was built completely from scratch.

Our IGL needs to learn a lot about his players to understand what they like and what they don't like, and the same goes for the players. We have an IGL we never played with before and a different calling style, and that's when we need to adapt to our caller and our leader.

There are just a lot of things within the team that we just needed to fix between the players, and I think that's just the biggest thing we've been working on. A lot of us get along together, we have good spirits in the team and everybody enjoys being around each other.

It's been a little difficult in-game because people are on different pages of the book, that's just the biggest thing we've been working on. It's been showing, of course, with the Chengdu results and here so far, we just secured the top eight.

As you said, you just secured top eight. Next up is Astralis. Are you already satisfied with your performance here, or are you aiming for more?

In my interviews that I had before this event, I said we're aiming for top eight or top four, which would be pretty acceptable. But as I said, our team has high expectations, so we would like to go deeper and start getting close, at least near the podium.

So there's a little bit of tension. Maybe not tension, but I'm sure there's a little bit of rivalry between stavn, jabbi, and cadiaN. They probably want to beat each other. It's always fun and exciting to play ex-teammates, no matter how you went into your new teams. I think that it gives them extra energy and I think it gives cadiaN a bit of extra energy.

I know cadiaN wants us to win, be the best, and beat them as well, so it also gives us extra energy. I would definitely like to go a little bit deeper. But then again, Astralis are a tough team. We're just going to make sure we're playing our best and see what happens.

There's been a map pool change recently. Overpass is going out, a map you don't really play that much, with Dust2 coming in, an aim-heavy map that should suit your team in theory. How are you feeling about that?

As a team, it could be pretty good. I think FaZe played it back in the day when Russ [Twistzz] was playing, but I don't think HEROIC played it with cadiaN, they used to ban it back in the day. But for us on Liquid, we always played it. I don't like the map, but playing it as a team could be good.

I wish they would have brought in a different map, but seeing an old familiar map come back is always fun, especially one like Dust2, because it's a hallmark of Counter-Strike. Let's see what happens. Overpass going out kind of sucks, I enjoy the map, but it's always nice to have changes. Changes are always fun.