NAF: "I don't understand the notion that we 'betrayed' North America"

Ahead of a revitalized Liquid's debut at the BLAST Premier Fall Groups, Dust2.us' Gonçalo "GoncOak" Carvalho had the chance to speak with longtime Liquid member Keith "NAF" Markovic. The two went on to discuss Liquid's time in Europe so far, how Aleks "Rainwaker" Petrov and Robert "Patsi" Isyanov have been slotting into the lineup, and whether or not North American fans should still be rooting for the organization.

Kicking off, how has your time been so far in Europe, and how has practice been coming along?

A lot of us are obviously familiar with coming to Europe, especially with our team now having three Europeans. So, they're already at home, and for oSee and myself, it’s something we've already done plenty of times. Especially for myself, been doing this for a while, you know? So yeah, everything's going really well; we're all happy. We have bootcamped or you know, we practiced. I mean, technically it would be a bootcamp if we were still a majority North American team. But yeah, we just practiced in the Liquid facility in Utrecht for about a week and a half, or so. We've had a little bit of practice, obviously, we would have hoped for a little bit more. But you know, right now we're all happy. We're in good spirits, hopefully, we can have a good tournament here and you know, start off strong.

Are you looking to stay permanently in Europe for now?

That is something obviously being looked into with Liquid. They’re looking into things for us, especially with oSee and myself and being from North America, that's something they need to look more into for us. So right now, we're just going to continue doing what we have and what we have already been doing with Liquid. We'll see, definitely down the line, how things will be held for the future.

Would you say that the chemistry is there with your new teammates?

So far yes; Patsi and Rainwaker have good personalities. They're not too shy, they’re comfortable being around us. Steve, our manager, has made sure that they're feeling good, that they're feeling happy. We're always joking with them, we have good humor together, so that's very important for having chemistry within our team and all the players. We're happy that everyone's getting along. Everyone seems to be comfortable, nobody seems to be outside the box within our team. So yeah, we're feeling happy. We're feeling confident. We're all getting along, and we feel good together.

You played with EliGE and nitr0 for such a long period of time. How do you feel losing two teammates like that in such a short period of time?

Business is business, you need to make changes at times. And sometimes changes are hard especially when changing players like EliGE, a player that's been around in Liquid for eight years and it's been a big part of his life and his career. But change is always inevitable, however, we had a lot of good times with nitr0 and EliGE. A lot of ups and downs; we achieved things together that a lot of other teams haven't, especially the Grand Slam and winning specific tournaments like Cologne and all that. I'm happy for nitr0, he's got his family going and he seems to be happy with his life and all that. With EliGE it’s a little bit of a different story, I guess, having to change him. But he seems to be doing pretty well; he seems pretty happy on Complexity from what I've seen. So, I'm happy for him; he seems to be comfortable living his life, doing his thing. I'm happy that he's happy. Everyone seems to be in good spirits. Everybody's living the good life, you know. Yeah, happy for everyone.

Liquid is now a European roster, EG wanted to come to Europe or have a European roster, and Complexity is trying to spend more time in Europe, although they have a North American roster. Is this the beginning of the end for North American Counter-Strike?

When it comes to North American Counter-Strike, I think it's just within the scene. It's just difficult with a lot of the players and a lot of the talent that have come up. There's not much of it. Obviously, there are some players that you can pick out of the hat, but again, I think the biggest question mark and the big reason we didn't want to go for North American players is just that you have to teach a lot. They have to learn a lot to grow. It's a completely different atmosphere, whereas you can just come to Europe and you already have players that have already been playing in the tier one scene and they understand a lot of the meta and the mechanics of everything. So, we didn't want to have to put another year in or so teaching these players to be up to our level, up to our standards.

I think that was a big reason for the change and also just Counter-Strike is more based in Europe anyways and if you want to be the best you have to be in Europe, and I think that's always something I've strived for. I think you can even see with Twistzz on FaZe with what he's achieved by staying and playing in Europe. And if you're just going back and forth from North America to Europe, you lose a lot of progress, you lose a lot of time. If you want to be the best, you simply just need to be in Europe. I understand with our team, there was a lot of hate about our roster changes and moving to Europe, but what do people want us to do? You want us to just be a North American poster team just playing and just being that team? “Oh, there's that team from North America that will most likely never win again because they're always having these obstacles that they have to deal with”. Or, I can still strive for what I dreamed for, to be a champion, always at times, and be the best, and actually have a chance to win. And that's what I want to do. I want my chances to be the best to win.

I don't want to just sit here for the rest of my career just being a poster team, being on social media, being like, “Oh yeah, we're from North America. We're the North American team, but we're just going to be that team that always loses”. I'm here to win. I'm not here to just take a paycheck and just do everything for North America and just be that team. I'd rather have my chance at winning than just being that poster team.

Do you think this roster has what it takes to win the Major?

Yes, of course. I think playing with European players, they have a completely different understanding of the team; they know what it takes to actually win, and they have completely different work ethics, and completely different mental compared to a lot of North American players. That was a big problem within North America, I feel like a lot of them have weak mental fortitude, and they also don't know what it takes to play tier one Counter-Strike. It takes a lot of time; I'm not saying that the players will never be there, I believe they will be there at a certain time, but it takes a lot of time. You can even look at us on Liquid. We spent a lot of time losing, and even for us we're still in Europe practicing and playing against the best teams, and we're still struggling at times. I would rather just make it that we're in Europe all the time playing with European players that understand tier one meta, and just play with that. That's the best chance to win. There's nothing really too much to say about that; you wanna be the best you gotta be in Europe. If you wanna play with the best players, they're in Europe, so play in Europe.

Now that YEKINDAR has had more time to sharpen his calls, are you expecting to catch teams off guard with his calling style?

Yeah, YEKINDAR is taking more of the mental with IGLing, even though when we had nitr0 for the past few tournaments YEKINDAR was already doing the IGLing, so people already have a brief introduction within the team about how the calls are. That was more on the fly, we didn't have too much time to come up with ways, and YEKINDAR maybe didn't call the way we wanted to play, and more so we're just playing nitr0's calling style and our setups that we had with nitr0. Now, YEKINDAR has taken more of the mantle of controlling more things and just doing more things that he wants to do and how he believes the game should be played. I believe YEKINDAR is a very smart player, a very intelligent player, and I believe he has what it takes to be an in-game leader even though a lot of people are doubting him. We'll just have to wait and see what people see from us. We're just gonna try our best, and I'm sure YEKINDAR has a lot of work to do for us. He's been putting in a lot of work within our practices and our bootcamp, staying up late, going over every map with our coach and analyst, and all that. He's putting up a lot of time and effort, so I understand people maybe see him as a young player and a top player, he was in the top twenty the past few years, so people are maybe afraid that he'll lose that light, but if people were within our team, they would understand how and why he wants to be an IGL. We're fully confident in him, I'm confident in him, so we're confident as a team.

You have also been a consistent top twenty player, and your stats in recent months have looked good. Can we expect that same level of performance despite roster changes? Have your roles been affected by said changes?

No; I mean obviously I made some changes where maybe I'm taking some of EliGE's roles and Rainwaker's taking some of mine because we have similar playstyles, both somewhat lurkers on our teams. I've changed more of my spots for Rainwaker, but for me, I think I've played almost every spot in the game almost on every map at one point in my career, so I'm pretty confident. Even with our practices and our bootcamp I've been playing really well, if not better than I have before, so I'm still confident, and I'm just going to do my thing, play my game. Confidence is everything in my opinion in Counter-Strike, so I don't really care what spot I'm playing, I'm gonna be confident with anything I'm doing. If you're not confident, you're not gonna do shit, and if you're confident, you're gonna do shit.

Can we expect you in the top twenty this year?

I mean, we'll see. I feel like I should've been there last year, I had like a 1.13 or 1.10 rating against top 5 but I didn't get into it. We'll see. That's something that's like a bonus. Obviously, I want to perform and do my role for my organization and my team and all that, but obviously, my priority is to win trophies and do whatever I need for my team to win it. If I'm on the bottom or not playing well and whatever, as long as we're winning that's all that's important. If I need to be fragging and doing all the work, then alright. If I don't have to be doing anything and just doing some side stuff, then alright, I just want to win.

You have FaZe, G2, and OG in your group. What are the chances that Liquid is the one that comes out on top?

With all the changes in the group, obviously, we're the team that made the most. Not technically quite right, OG was the one that made the most changes. When we look at the group, we definitely believe that we should be beating teams, especially like OG. Then you have FaZe and G2 who have made no changes, so they still have everything that they know about each other and they just need to make some tweaks here and there, but their chemistry and everything is all there. Playing those two teams will definitely be hard, and they'll be difficult for us, but we believe with our team and the players that we have anything can happen, and we're just gonna take it match by match and see how it goes. At the end of the day, we're all confident.

Let's talk about map pool. I've heard rumors that you guys are playing all seven maps. Is that true?

Yeah, I mean in a sense it can be, because right now we're trying to discover which maps we're most comfortable on and which maps we prefer playing on. We have some players that have never played this map, but we have a player that played this map a lot and a player that doesn't play this map. So we're just trying to figure out what's more comfortable for us as individuals, but also as a team, that feels good. So right now, yes, we're kinda looking at everything. It's obviously a little difficult with making changes, then you have to make changes for all the maps and everything, so it's gonna start a little slow maybe for us. With the players that we have, we're confident that anything can happen, and I'm confident with all my teammates so we'll see.

G2 on Saturday, is that a win for you?

Of course! (laughs)

Should North American fans still support you guys, and why?

I mean, I don't really understand the whole notion that we "betrayed" North America. It's pretty much like I said in your previous question, I would even be reading and looking at these things when we did have nitr0 and EliGE, and players and people would be saying "Oh we need to make these changes about these things, they're never going to win, why don't they just go to Europe and do this?", and all that. We ended up making these changes and going to Europe, and they're like "Woah woah, why did you make the change?", and it's like well half the community is telling us to make the change anyways. I don't know, with all the people saying that we betrayed North America, I don't really understand it, because at the end of the day, we still have three North American people on our team; our coach is Canadian, I'm Canadian, oSee is American. We're still very much a North American team, we're just making changes that we believe are the best to win, and like I mentioned in my own answers, do you just want us to be that team that's just a poster team stealing paychecks and showing up to events to lose? If that's what they want, then fine, whatever (laughs).

I'm still young, I still believe we have a lot of players that want to win, we have a young team, and that's why we made this transition to Europe We want to be competitors, we don't want to be a laughingstock, we don't want to be a joke. If people want us to just stay in North America, then alright, I'll collect my paycheck and do my thing and they can just be proud that we're a North American team. With all the shits and giggles I just said, we're here to win, we believe this is the right change to make to potentially be the win. I'm not gonna say that oh this team will definitely be the best team in the whole wide world, I don't know that yet, but I'm confident in the players. We're gonna take it day by day, week by week, month by month, and see how it goes. I believe we're on the right track and making the right changes to be making a championship-contending team, so that's what I want to do. I don't want my career to be over just yet, I would like to still have a chance to win, so that's why I'm here, and that's why I'm always saying I want to transition and play on a European team so I can actually have a chance to win.

NAF will return to the server with Liquid's revitalized lineup in a matter of days, with the team set to debut on Saturday with their opening match versus G2 scheduled for 06:00AM.