YEKINDAR: "We're still finding the balance"

Earlier Thursday, Liquid took down BIG in a close three-map affair to stave off elimination following an opening loss to Astralis. With just one series separating them from the main Cologne tournament, all eyes are on Liquid to perform with their new squad and show that their transition to a European team was a necessary one. In that BIG game, Mareks "YEKINDAR" Gaļinskis especially turned up the heat, topping the leaderboard after all was said and done. After the game, Dust2.us' Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore talked with the IGL about how the transition is going and his new role as the shot caller.

It seemed like you really came alive on map three to take the series against BIG. What happened to allow you to take over the game?

Honestly, we just lost games. When you lose games you talk about your mistakes. We lost Overpass against Astralis and FaZe at BLAST. We already talked about what happened, what were the problems, how we want to fix it, and how we want to play. And obviously, when you're winning rounds, you have more chances to get kills. Also, the team just felt super confident today. There was really good communication today, not just as a team but also within each site. Each player was talking to their own partner, in a way, and that just enables us to be in the right place at the right time.

I see that your Liquid is playing more Ancient and Vertigo, two maps that older versions shyed away from. What is going on with Liquid's map pool?

We're still figuring it out. Obviously, you have practice and then you have official games. Some maps that we thought were strong in practice, we played in officials and we noticed a lot of mistakes. We're trying to understand which map is the stronger one and which map is the weaker one. That's why we have different picks. The more games we play the more we gain, and the more understanding we gain for which maps are better for us. At the moment we don't necessarily know.

Patsi is a very aggressive player as you were too. Are you consciously giving up some space to give him more opportunities to perform?

It depends. We try to put him in spots where he's comfortable. When something he does doesn't fit in our system, we obviously have a talk, and we're improving. We're still finding the balance of how much space we want to give Patsi or I want to take. He took a lot of aggressive roles and he's that type of player. He talks a lot and is incredibly skilled and thoughtful as a player. Me, as an IGL, I need to be more in the back cause I can look at my teammates and speed up when I need to or slow them down when I need to. Otherwise, if I would be micromanaging and IGLing from the front, I could lose focus for a second and die.

To listen to the rest of the interview, watch the YouTube video linked below.