EliGE: "Now that we have our belief back, I think we can start showing way better games"

FaZe are through to the second stage at IEM Cologne after EliGE has just put up his highest-rated map of the year.

Two days into IEM Cologne and FaZe's return to the previous lineup featuring Helvijs "⁠broky⁠" Saukants instead of Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev, the team has guaranteed a berth in Stage 2 following convincing wins against BIG and Liquid.

In the second, Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski put up a 2.45 rating to lead FaZe to a dominant Nuke finish against his old team, his highest rating since the beginning of the year.

Following FaZe's qualification, the 28-year-old American stopped by HLTV's microphone to talk about the performance, what's different about the team with broky now compared to when he was last in the lineup, and hopes moving forward at IEM Cologne.

If you can't see the embed above, you can listen to the interview on HLTV's interview channel on Spotify.

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I wanted to get your reaction, that was your best map in the FaZe jersey.

"Yeah, overall, I didn't think that would happen on the third map. The first two were pretty good, but I dunno, I just started shooting hard, Finn was calling good strats, I was able to get into the zone really easily."

The second map didn't go that hot for you, and it feels like that's been your biggest issue in FaZe, that you can have these highs but it can also come with the lows. Do you think that is a problem or something you need to address?

If you look at it like that, it'd be hard to diagnose any issues. If I just look at it from how the games go, on Inferno today and yesterday I honestly don't feel like there was that much that I could have done differently.

Yesterday for example against BIG, I feel like I was in a lot of the correct spots, but my teammates were just owning everybody. rain hits like an insane spray on Halls, or they just eco towards B...

Today I felt like I was two seconds off in a couple of the rounds to be able to get into more impactful kills, because we ended up getting some trades down top Banana in two rounds I remember, and I was just a couple feet behind getting into a better position to be able to take down more than one. But overall, I don't know, I think it's just step by step and trying to actually diagnose the issue.

I was talking to karrigan yesterday about the fire and hunger that is there now that broky is back and it looks from the outside that the atmosphere is better versus the last time broky was in the lineup. Is it like that from inside the team as well?

"I think that towards the end when we were playing with broky, we were at our wits' end. After Melbourne the guys just couldn't really get back into it and reset as a team from how we feel about our hope.

We had our stint with Sasha, and you get to see what our strengths are, what we're missing that we don't have from broky anymore, and we come back into the season and know what we have to work on. There's still always gonna be so much stuff to fix and you just kinda have to take your time, and try to diagnose what the most important thing to work on is at this moment.

Now that we have our belief back, I think we can start showing way better games. We already made it to the next stage in Cologne, so so far so good.

In the next stage the teams are gonna be different, but this is a Liquid that can bring a good level. Does this fill you with more confidence, that you are on the right path?

I'd say so. BIG were playing pretty decently, I know they've had their struggles, but Liquid all have really strong shooters, they can play really strong CS. I think today, at least from my perspective it felt like they were a little bit lacking in confidence. They weren't completely sure of what they were doing on the rounds to rounds.

When you're taking fights in CS, if you're not 100% certain every time you take your fights, if there's any uncertainty at all, you'll probably lose it. And I kinda felt that from them. When we got to third map, we were just fully focused, everything was certain, shooting hard, and I think that's something that can propel us to keep on going forward in this tournament.