daps: "YEKINDAR will just call because he has more reps on these maps"
Liquid's start to the BLAST.tv Paris Major wasn't nearly as expected. Falling down 0-2 was quite a shock for fans around the world, but the team has managed to tie their record after two straight BO3 wins against Fluxo and Complexity, respectively.
Crucially, the team underwent a small change that can explain some of the problems, Mareks "YEKINDAR" Gaļinskis has been IGLing during this Major.
Swedish journalist Kalle "Hallonkraem" Strömgren overheard YEKINDAR during the game against Fluxo say "Guys, I'm calling now". After today's win over fellow North Americans, Strömgren asked the rifler if he has been taking over the IGL role from Nick "nitr0" Cannella.
Confidential information (jokingly). It depends on what maps and which opponents we play, who feels it more, that person calls.
YEKINDAR also told the Swede that usually the mid-round calls are his but early-rounds see nitr0 take point.
Following this, Lucas Aznar Miles from HLTV asked Damian "daps" Steele about the change, to which Liquid's coach confirmed the situation and gave the reasoning behind it, explaining that nitr0 had to miss the first few days of the bootcamp, which propelled YEKINDAR to assume the IGL position during those days. This isn't an abnormal situation though. YEKINDAR usually is the secondary caller for his team, meaning this was merely a strategic change due to nitr0 not having as much practice time as the Latvian rifler for the Major.
The main reason for it was that we had the two week bootcamp and nitr0 had things that he had to deal with, so he couldn't be there for like the first five or six days.
We were like creating all of the things together and stuff, and YEKINDAR was already secondary calling, so it's not like a massive shift. So for this tournament, YEKINDAR is IGL and nitr0 is second IGL.
As it was pointed out by some more aware fans, YEKINDAR has been the one accompanying daps in the vetoes, whereas, normally, it's nitr0 who does it.
Liquid return to the servers tomorrow against Grayhound, at 01:30PM, in a do-or-die BO3 series.
