NAF: "I expected cadiaN, Twistzz, and YEKINDAR to be the front stars"

Despite a troubled start to the new squad, Liquid has sometimes found some great moments, recently reaching the CCT Global Finals 2024 grand finals, with the two Canadian stars of the team being two of the best performers of the event. In reality, Keith "NAF" Markovic and Russel "Twistzz" Van Dulken have been the only consistent pieces of the squad amidst rumors of Casper "cadiaN" Møller leaving Liquid.

Dust2.us' Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore talked with NAF about his recent uptick in performance, sharing the star label with his countryman, while the rest of the team underperforms. NAF, who is seen as one of the most laid-back players in the CS scene, talked about Felipe "skullz" Medeiros's role in the team as the Brazilian is also known for being more of a quiet player, letting his performances do the talking.

Please note that the full interview can be found below on YouTube, while the transcript has some key snippets from their conversation.

You and Twistzz have generally been lauded as the two players rising to the occasion on Liquid while cadiaN and YEKINDAR are a focus of criticism on this team. Amidst this skullz almost gets lost in the mix on this team. What can you say about him?

skullz is a good guy, he has a great attitude, he's a good player, a good team player. I think he just has a very passive personality, I think at times he might be a little bit afraid to be aggressive, to step on other people's toes to give himself more of a voice. Overall, he is a good player, a super talented anchor player that can just hit headshots. He has a good attitude and personality as a teammate and all that is really good.

Of course, it's been a little slow for him, it's pretty tough going from speaking Portuguese in all your teams and then coming here with Liquid, different expectations, speaking English and definitely playing with players he respects a lot more, compared to maybe some of his Brazilian counterparts in the past. I think he has been doing well, there's been some struggles here and there but, overall, with everything that's going on within our team, it's hard for people to find their places sometimes. At the end of the day, we are trying.

The big highlight of this team has been you and Twistzz. Whether the team is struggling, or whether the team is succeeding, you guys are seemingly leading the charge together. Do you think that you two being the stars of the team is sustainable, was that the vision for the team at the beginning and what do you think that can tell us about the future of the team?

When the team was first created I definitely expected cadiaN, Twistzz, and YEKINDAR to be the front stars because they have the most voices in the team, they have the most responsibilities of what they want to do and how they want to do it. I think I mentioned in my HLTV interview in Malta, I don't really call anything, I don't want to do anything, I just want them to have as much space and freedom as possible, where they feel like they can do whatever they want.

Of course, I definitely may have higher expectations from them as well, I'm just doing my job, of course, you could just think about it as "hey, I don't have to too much, I just need to focus on my crosshair and just do my job", but then again, as anchor players, you don't always see everything but they bring a lot of the strategies and the ideas to the team. At the very least, I just need to do my job and get the kills I need to get. There are some different expectations from players and some people expect more from others.

There's no denying, with YEKINDAR and all that, people giving him a hard time and underperformance, I know he is working really hard, he is trying really hard, he even won FACEIT the other month, so he's putting a lot of hours and time to be the best that he can be. There are a lot of hurdles that we have been going through as a team, we are still trying to fix it and see how things go and we just have to keep on going.