EliGE: "NA teams specifically get way more criticism"

Liquid continued their sharp form at the Americas RMR, this time putting Flamengo in their crosshairs with a sound 16-6 victory on the ever-familiar Mirage. Following their comfortable win, Jonathan "EliGE" Jablanowski had a chat with Dust2.us' Ryan Friend about their current form, handling the team's ups and downs, and prospects for the Major.

Talk to me a little bit about the prep you did for Flamengo. Was there anything specific that you were looking to exploit?

Yeah, we pretty much saw that they didn't play Mid at all, they were pretty passive overall. I think we play well against those teams, those that give us a lot of space. You saw how we just had Mid for most of the rounds. I think that Flamengo's gameplan, you could see in the first two rounds that they did want to fight Mid and that they wanted to show a different look but after it didn't work out for them they just defaulted into their normal spots. That was why we kept rolling with the game.

YEKINDAR having another monster game. nitr0 was talking earlier about how he is trying to get you and YEKINDAR into the spots that are going to be best suited for the team. Are you seeing more of an evolution of that? Are we going to see better results coming from you two?

I would expect so. I mean, we didn't really change anything specific right now. Overall, it's just making sure our communication is good. That was the main talk we had after we lost to paiN the second time, just making sure our comms are good, we aren't assuming anything from anybody, making sure that the comms are updated so everyone knows what is being what, what isn't if they have a flash if they don't. I think that is what is going to help us propel ourselves to the next level.

Liquid has had an up-and-down first half of the year. It's been a little surprising but at some points, you've been able to say you've made top four at some of the biggest events. Do you feel the criticism might be overboard?

As individuals, we hold ourselves to high standards but I think NA teams specifically get way more criticism. It is what it is, it doesn't really matter. We just need to focus on ourselves and just make sure that we know what we want as a team, and what we have to work on as a team and get better with that. As we started out, we were going to be putting ourselves at a disadvantage by wanting to change our permanent veto. So when we went into BLAST it was hard because we committed to going into Nuke for this half of the year.

We weren't playing Vertigo anymore, we wanted to make Nuke for us because we felt like it was better for our playstyle overall, and I think that is paying dividends. Even in that paiN game, we lost, we lost so many rounds we should have won and the overall comfort of the team is good for us. The map pool is developing a lot better and we're going to come into the Major strong.

To see the rest of the interview where EliGE talks about potential matchups for Liquid's 2-0 game and more, watch the YouTube video below.