NAF: "I truly believed someone else should have had my spot, but my teammates backed me up"

"I'm glad to have a second chance," the Canadian rifler added.

Liquid and Keith "⁠NAF⁠" Markovic had a rough 2025 so far, which prompted the Canadian rifler to doubt his future on the roster ahead of the summer break, but he was kept on the team for the second part of the year.

He averaged a 1.04 rating so far in Cologne, his best since Katowice in February, but the 27-year-old says he isn't where he wants to be yet.

"I need to find my joy and happiness to play. When I'm happy, that's when I play my best CS, and I'm trying to find that, still," he told HLTV after Liquid qualified for Stage 2.

He also spoke about the upcoming games in Cologne, Viktor "⁠flashie⁠" Tamás Bea's impact on the team, and the deciding victory against FlyQuest.

Alright, NAF, congratulations on making it to Stage 2. Apart from Dust2 it looked convincing, but that ending here on Ancient took a while to close out. Tell me about it, how did you finally make it through?

We were confident on Nuke, it's a map we put a lot of time into it. Versus FaZe it was a really disappointing finish, but we knew we could do a lot better here. Of course FlyQuest isn't exactly the same opponent as FaZe, but we were confident, we had all the right reads and the right plays on Nuke, and winning that was obviously good for us.

Going into Dust2, I'm not sure totally what happened, that's definitely something to look back on. Maybe we played too fast, overconfident, overeager, and maybe we underestimated them in their play. We played poorly, nothing else to say about it.

There was a comms round from 11-0 and you guys still seemed very on, very active, still communicating.

Yeah, of course, in Counter-Strike anything can happen. We kinda joked about 'hey, FaZe came back from 11-1 versus us, so maybe we can do it versus them.' We were still trying to do the comeback, and especially when you're down 11-0, you just say, 'screw it, just try your best and see what happens.' Unfortunately, just too many mistakes. Just a bunch of mistakes and that's all we can say about it.

And then Ancient, it was a good map for us, we decided either Ancient or Inferno as the last map and we put time on Ancient, of course. Inferno is a map they played here at this event, so they had reps on it, so we just went with Ancient. It was good, we started off CT side and lost the pistol, but we were able to string enough gunrounds, I think 8-4 was the end of the half, and then won a very important pistol with NertZ with the pistol ace.

We didn't get eco'd, but then it got to a point to where they were coming back, I gave them the bird a little bit on my molly clutch round, and I was like, 'guys, don't let this bite me in the ass.' I was getting a little worried there it was, but we had some good ideas and came out on top.

You're not the one who usually shoots things back and forth too much, what happened there?

Yeah, I've gotta find some ways to bring some laughter to the team and also for myself to just be more confident. Obviously, individually this past season I haven't been confident at all, and that's something I was praised for a lot in my career, for my consistency and all that.

Counter-Strike is confidence and confidence is Counter-Strike, you just need to have that and this entire season I've been playing with zero confidence. I need to find my joy and happiness to play. When I'm happy, that's when I play my best CS, and I'm trying to find that, still. FlyQuest isn't the top 10 or the top 5 teams and I need to step up and perform against those other top-tier teams, and I'm gonna keep trying my best to continue that.

Ending the last season, you weren't exactly sure what the future held for you. Obviously, heading into the second one you stayed on the team - do you view this as kind of a second chance?

Yeah. During that time it was a really dark period. It was a really depressing time for myself. I truly believed I shouldn't be on the team, I'm always realistic with myself if I'm underperforming, and I truly believed that maybe someone else should have had my spot.

But my teammates all backed me up and said none of this is what we're thinking, we want you here and we see value in you. Obviously, that reassures me and that makes me happy that they still want me no matter how poor my performances were, that I thought I don't deserve it. I'm glad to have a second chance.

Tell me about this run in Cologne so far and heading into the second stage. You started the season with this online loss, and I don't know how much stock you're putting into that, but at least here you're heading to stage 2 without too many issues. How confident are you guys moving forward?

Obviously, we've gotta be confident, but with some of the games we played here there's a lot of things that we need to fix. If we do play against the best teams, they're just gonna punish us.

The FaZe game was a good showing for us to see where we are at, and of course we got the Inferno map, but on the other two maps we got pretty much smoked, so there's a lot of work that we need to put in, otherwise it's gonna be a terrible event for us. We need to keep our heads down, keep practicing, keep working.

Lastly, I wanted to ask about flashie. Tell me a little bit about him. We know him more as an analyst and this is a big coaching job for him to come into a top team with big ambitions. What is he like from your perspective and what does he bring to the team?

Of course, flashie had a lot of experience with B1ad3 as the assistant coach under NAVI, so obviously that comes with a lot of respect from us. That comes with a lot of confidence and trust in a lot of the things that he's saying, and we enjoy having him around, he's a good personality, good humor for us.

On our team, I think in the past season with our players there are a lot of ideas coming around and I think it's only natural when we have NertZ who came from HEROIC and ENCE, and you have Twistzz from FaZe, and you have siuhy from MOUZ. There were a lot of ideas and things flowing, and there are so many great ideas and good things about them, but it's just too many people who wanna be on a different page and thinking maybe this is the best way.

flashie is doing a good job at keeping everybody in check and just going with one direction and one path. As long as we're all on the same path, I think that elevates our game instead of thinking, 'oh, maybe this is the best way or this is the best way.' We just need to figure out one and flashie is very good, he's got a lot of authority, he's very assertive in what we need to do. If he tells us to be quiet, we're quiet, and he tells us what we need to do, and all the players respect him. He brings a lot to the team for sure.