daps on Liquid's European roster: "Not every player wanted to continue playing with EliGE"

On Snake & Banter Episode 45, Damian "daps" Steele sat down with Duncan "Thorin" Shields and Alex "Mauisnake" Ellenberg to speak about various Counter-Strike topics including HLTV's Top 20 ranking, daps' return to playing on NRG, and the final few months of daps' coaching stint on Liquid, which ended after the organization decided to abandon the European project with Aleks "Rainwaker" Petrov and Robert "Patsi" Isyanov.

Once the topic of conversation transitioned to daps' role in choosing the European additions, daps said:

The original roster that we had decided on was KSCERATO, and he turned us down back then and he turned them down again this time, and then flameZ we were very close to getting. It was flameZ going to us or Vitality. The original proposed lineup was KSCERATO and flameZ. When that didn't work out, we had the option to keep EliGE, but not every player wanted to continue playing with EliGE, and I think also EliGE felt sorta the same about staying. I remember talking to him and he even offered to play anchor spots and completely change his roles, but I told him, to be honest, I don't think that's best for him. I don't think it fits his play style at all and he's never really done it before. I personally said, "I think its better for your career if you go to a different team."

We kept going through options and options. I'll defend the roster moves that we had at the time. Rainwaker on paper, me and YEKINDAR sat down and watched demos of like 30, 40 players and just went through each player. For the replacement for nitr0, we just need an anchor, someone who plays fairly high percentage, doesn't overpeek, and this was the name we eventually came to. Then Patsi was the replacement for EliGE. Filling that role is pretty hard at the time just because we were making a roster move at a time where we're spending either 700,000 or a million dollars to get somebody, which didn't seem like it was an option, and we just went with Patsi because he's a good player. We got owned by him, he was pretty good on Spirit, he had a good year. He's 19 years old, he made top eight at two Majors, it's like, why not.

I think the biggest issue that it came down to if I was going to generalize it was we just made too many of these changes at once. Changing IGL too, it's not that each individual choice was bad, it's just all three at once was too much [...] We weren't lazy with the scouting and we literally explored every option we could. It's just at the time, there was no other option.

The NRG IGL also gave praise to nitr0's calling and leadership on numerous iterations of Liquid, saying:

His biggest strength, which is an intangible, is that he's a glue guy. Not to be cliché but to go more in depth, he is very good at listening and accepts all ideas. He may not be someone like cadiaN like "This is my way" and yelling, motivating people in that sense, but he's very easy to be around and he's someone that everyone feels comfortable talking to. He creates that sort of environment that a lot of IGLs or people had a hard time creating, and that's natural for him.

That was something that when YEKINDAR went to IGL, it's not necessarily that YEKINDAR is a bad IGL, he understands the game just as good as anybody and his calls weren't bad either. It's just that we lost a glue guy in the team. I'm coaching, and there's definitely more I could've done coaching, I could've been a lot harder on YEKINDAR for sure. I'm always honest and say my opinion, but I could have been a lot harder because we lost that second person in-game. That's a hard thing as a coach, I can't do anything when the round is live. I can't be there. We lost that second voice in a way. We hoped Patsi could be it, but there was definitely a pretty big language barrier. It was pretty hard for him to communicate in English. That's where oSee stepped up pretty big, and oSee kinda filled that role when we weren't expecting, but at the end it wasn't enough. We needed another person on the squad to bring people together in-game, and we just didn't have that.

Watch the full episode of Snake & Banter below, where daps also gives insight into the formation of NRG's roster.