EliGE: "When I tried to have a smile for the photos it was really tough"

After the heartbreaking loss against Spirit that ended Liquid's IEM Rio Major run, Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski spoke with Dust2.us' Ryan Friend. The conversation pondered Liquid's future, the mistakes made against Spirit, the pressure Liquid felt on the stage, and recapped the Rio Major as a whole.

Unfortunate ending for Liquid here in Rio. Can you walk me through what your feelings were after the game ended?

It was just something we didn't expect to happen, at all. We have been playing really well this second half of the year, and this is the biggest tournament of the year, so it was really disappointing. I felt like they gave us a lot of hints to get back into that game and we weren't able to take advantage of it. When the game ended I felt really sad about it. Of course I want to go to the fans and it's the last day and everything. I wanted to make sure I take pictures with everyone and sign stuff, but when I tried to have a smile for the photos it was really tough.

Throughout the game it seemed there were some moments when you guys were under pressure from Spirit, it was a very aggressive attack from them. Did you guys feel the pressure of the match? Were you feeling the pressure from the crowd?

It's hard to say. I thnk we started to make more mistakes as the game went on. Some really unfortunate mistakes that probably, I guess, if the pressure wasn't there, we wouldn't have made. The crowd was giving us such good energy, wanting us to win so hard, we really wanted to win for them. Sucks that we didn't.

The addition of YEKINDAR into this second half of the year has been great. You guys have revolutionized yourselves as a team. Do you feel that this shortcoming is not indicative of where your true skill is?

I definitely think that we have way better to show than we did here. If we were able to play to even 80% of how we were in practice and everything, then we would have done great. Obviously, practice and the matches are completely different, when the pressure is on that's when the mistakes come out. That's just what we have to focus on and try to have a good rest of the year with our next potential two tournaments.

As you are heading into the BLAST Premier Fall Finals and potentially World Finals, are you ready for a break before you start the new year and try to focus on what went right and what went wrong?

There's a lot more than we have shown and we can win any tournament. There are so many good teams that messed up here with the pressure and everyone playing on top of their game, we can play a lot better than that. For the next tournaments, we want to be able to get the win, to show what we are actually made of.

The veto seemed to be a bit interesting there. I know that you guys talked before about how you have been working on Overpass. What was the team's decision to go with Ancient?

I think that Ancient is the right play for us. I think we got the veto we wanted, that's the one we thought was the most likely as well. We were blessed with CT-side Ancient third map, and we fumbled it. They got seven rounds, and it's really difficult. We had a pretty decent T-half, we got five or six rounds, and that's incredible for T-side Ancient. We just fumbled it on the CT-side. We can have a solid CT-side, we shown that against NAVI, but here we couldn't.

This event has had a lot of upsets, FaZe 0-3, NIP 0-3, and more. A lot of people have been saying it's been a weird event, do you feel the same way?

I don't know if I would say weird. I think that everyone is really playing very well now, and if you don't show up ready to win, the teams that are here to win are going to do it. It's simple as that. Just see how close the margins are at the top level.

Is there any young player that you have seen blow up during this event that you are excited about looking into the next year?

Even before the event, I would have said Patsi. I think he has been playing pretty well, he has that winner mindset. I would say him.