There were a lot of rumours about the future of the Liquid roster, but that did not affect star rifler Jonathan ‘EliGE’ Jablonowski in the team’s pursuit of victory over NIP, who came into the matchup as clear favorites. After securing the three-map upset, I was able to speak with Elige about the roster rumours, the NA scene, and more.
The whole dead roster label, do you think that let you guys play with more freedom today?
Yeah, I definitely think that gives us a lot more freedom and we are in good spirits, completely. We are chill, we know that we are just gonna give the last good shot on the last couple of tournaments so we are trying our best and we just took it from NIP.
Heroic is the next opponent, with the Danish crowd, how are you feeling going into that game?
They are going to be a really tough opponent, obviously. They’re going to have the crowd advantage for sure and of course they are looking really solid. They are probably the number two team in the world so we are just going to look to be playing super loose. This game gave us a lot of confidence definitely, and it’s going to help us in the next game.
News yesterday talking about the future of VINI in FURIA, he’s maybe linking up with you in Liquid. What are your thoughts about him as a player?
I think VINI is really good, I think he is underrated in the community for sure, I can’t say if he’s going to be joining or not but I think that he is really solid and … I’ll just end it there.
Floppy is back in Counter-Strike and there are now rumours about nitr0 coming back and maybe autimatic. What do you think that says about the NA scene going forward?
I think that it just shows that all of these players feel a lot more motivated to come back, they see a lot more potential and they feel that there will be a lot more competition and they get their competitive itch in CS a little bit better because there are more tournaments, there’s a lot of good teams out there, a lot of good players so it feels really exciting when you go to a tournament and you see s1mple and ZywOo, and how good all these teams are so I think it is a lot of fun knowing how good the competition is out there.
What are your goals for the rest of the tournament, do you think you can find a win based on momentum?
I think that we can, I mean, anything can happen. I’m sure that no one expected us to win any game and we just beat NIP so anything can happen. I think if we are all playing our game we could definitely win it. We had some really great heroics in these games on Mirage and Overpass that got us out of a lot of bad situations and I think that it feels pretty good overall. Just having that pressure relieved from us can make some great things sometimes.
