Spirit eliminate Liquid from IEM Katowice

The international squad will be a month without playing official matches.

Spirit secured a spot in the IEM Katowice Group B lower bracket final with a 2-0 victory over Liquid, with another excellent performance from star player Danil "⁠donk⁠" Kryshkovets, and will face GamerLegion for a spot in the playoffs.

Liquid bid the tournament farewell as this is their second defeat after losing to The MongolZ in the group stage's opening round, and they head into a month of practice before they're scheduled to play their next event, ESL Pro League Season 21, which kicks off on March 7.

Liquid's coach, Torbjørn "⁠mithR⁠" Nyborg, appeared on the broadcast interview after the match and spoke with HLTV to give some further insight into his team's performance in Poland.

Twistzz is fleshing out Liquid's system

"We made major progress during this event. We had a lot of good and strong discussions that are moving us closer to having this identity we can be proud of and believe in," mithR told Freya "⁠Freya⁠" Spiers on the broadcast after the match.

Some of that progress could be due to a new way of understanding the playbook. "Twistzz has been doing an amazing job by simplifying the entire playbook into a system that is more clear about what the mission, the goal, and the purpose is," mithR then told HLT V moments after his broadcast interview. "I feel like everybody is on the right page when it comes to that."

Along with Russel "⁠Twistzz⁠" Van Dulken's restructuring of the playbook, Guy "⁠NertZ⁠" Iluz's integration is also shaping this new Liquid. "NertZ is very vocal," mithR added. "He has a strong opinion on how he wants to play and what he believes in. He's also a strong believer in what we have here and is giving Russ all of the support he needs to call at his best."

Fumbling the dream bracket

After losing to HEROIC in their Stage 1 opener, Liquid bounced back against Wildcard and Complexity to qualify for Stage 2, where they were placed in a bracket with The MongolZ playing their first official of the year, a MOUZ team that just parted ways with Kamil "⁠siuhy⁠" Szkaradek, and a new iteration of GamerLegion, but a 2-1 loss to the Mongolians in the opening round derailed any thoughts of an easy path to the playoffs.

"We look back at that game against The MongolZ and we feel like we were the better team, but there are some unfortunate mistakes that cost us the game, and The MongolZ is a strong team that won't let you get away with those mistakes and that puts you in a really hard bracket," mithR lamented.

"There's a glimpse of how we want to perform, and we're on the right track, but as we can see, there's definitely mistakes that the more experienced teams are punishing us that we can't afford."

No officials for Liquid until Pro League

Liquid are walking a tightrope after elimination in Poland. The organization decided to skip PGL Cluj-Napoca and so the team will not play for another month before ESL Pro League, while direct rivals will be vying to surpass them in Valve's team ranking.

"I would lie if I said that I'm not worried about the lack of officials," mithR said. "It's important to be warm and used to the environment, used to sitting in the booth, and the feeling of playing officials when you're leading up to a tournament."

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"I'm a bit worried about how that's going to affect us in the future. Right now, I'm not too worried about the amount of tournaments or what tournaments we can go to. It helped us that Astralis won against FURIA. We're still in a strong position on the ranking, but we're not here to end up in the same place as 'just a stable top 10 team' as we did last season.

"We really want to take it a step further, and I feel like we're ready and very close to doing that, but we just need more time to perfect the current system that we're building."

Luckily for Liquid, who will be keeping an eye on the likes of MIBR and paiN to see what they do in Romania, FURIA also decided to back out of the event organized by PGL despite a 13-16th place finish in Katowice.