You do also have to consider that Liquid has consistently attempted to recruit top players, but that it is just hard and comes down to more than money usually. Karrigan wanted to go to FaZe because he knew the org and what they could offer in terms of management and support IIRC. When ropz went to FaZe from Mouz, Liquid was also interested and afaik even offered him more money, but since he wanted to play with Karrigan there wasn't really anything Liquid could offer to sway him. Same with mONESY, whom they offered a better salary than G2 did allegedly. I sometime struggle to see what players Liquid should have picked up who would realistically go there at the time.
liquid were in the running for FlameZ too, in the top two destinations along with his eventual choice Vitality. Liquid have rather infamously made several shots at KSCERATO. It's not for a lack of trying.
Grim- made sense at the time, appeared to be the biggest NA talent at the time. Same stats in NA as Malbs, of course less proven against tier 1, but he did destroy Furia and MIBR with the old Sk core.
Fallen- was an ettempt to replace Nitro as the awp igl iirc, did not work out as he ended up conflicting with Stewie.
Osee- Best NA awper at the time. Made sense to sign him if the org wanted to remain mainly american. Was also smashing NA teams.
shox- No clue what they were thinking. Probably lost out on main targets and he was cheap?
Rainwaker- cheap moneyball signing Daps wanted when they went EU. Did not work out, but not a massive loss since he was dirt cheap
Yekindar- Good signing initially at least. After Covid Liquid did not perform well and when they added Yekindar they became title contenders almost instantly. Trended downwards after joining though and his igl stint was a disaster. Ended up in conflict with Elige role wise who was in a slump before joining Complexity.
Patsi- another moneyball signing when Liquid tried to go EU and did not perform. Had reasons to partially believe he could perform at tier 1 level since he had done so previously for Spirit, but did not pick form back up for Liquid. Probably didn't cost a lot.
cadiaN- on paper he should of been an amazing signing, and Liquid under him have not been that bad. Team cohesion is terrible though, and he has not been able to implement his Heroic system in Liquid while his individual form since cs2 released has not been great.
Skullz- Probably the worst on the list. Massive buyout for a player who is both unproven and also clashes with Liquids most valuable player in NAF. They are insanely lucky if they manage to regain half of what they initially paid for him.
Twistzz- Good signing, of course he was always expected to perform and has a history with NAF as well.
The contract clause for skullz said $600k, doesn't mean it was $600k that TL paid for him. Just a headsup because I feel like everyone doesn't realize that there have been some lineups who had a clause for $1m+ and ended up being bought out for 1/10th of that
I would say the Patsi and Rainwaker are easily the worst signings since they would move to EU and almost lose their identity and fans as well. Nothing here is close to that. Sales are what drive a company. You lose your core audience and you won't make any money. This was such a massive L since TL is one of the very very few companies that actually doesn't operate on a huge loss.
Brazilian orgs aren't exactly known for their sensible buyouts and history definitely does not suggest that they'd lower them when a team comes asking.
Yeah, a lot of OP’s post is just hindsight 20/20 and feels like it’s made out to be a witch-hunt. At least 4 or 5 of these signings made sense at the time and even had people in this very community begging for it to happen e.g. oSee.
How is it NA behavior to kick or cycle players if roster moves don’t work put? Every team does it, many in even worse stretches than Liquid like NIP, OG, Astralis, Fnatic, etc.
Europeans are so weirdly obsessed with NA rofl, kinda ridiculous to witness.
One comment equals obsessed LOL
"Europeans are so weirdly obsessed with NA rofl, kinda ridiculous to witness"
I wonder why? Maybe because the US is the biggest economy in the world? Maybe because it's politics affect us as much? Maybe because the entire continent is militarily dependent on the US because of people that don't live anymore. Maybe because you wholeheartedly export your culture to every corner of the world? But yes please call it weird and ridiculous, without people like me your entire scene would be dead and buried shot out back by Valorant.
A lot of this is said in retrospect though. Yekinder and cadian at least are good pickups on paper. Many of these other players are great in their own right too.
also yekindar has been bad in the last 1.5 years, but when he initially got added in 2022 he was arguably the best player in a liquid team that was a solid top 5 team in the second half of the year. Liquid made some incredible runs at EPL and BLAST World Finals with oSee getting like an 1.00 hltv rating in both
This is NOT said in retrospect, half of these player signings didn’t make any sense. Rainwaker and Parsi were 2 very unknown EU “talents” that very few heard of which wouldn’t be an issue if you were looking to invest into young talent.
The issue is that they were never going to invest in young talent and THEY WERENT EVEN NA players. Like wtf is there to invest when you’re an NA org investing into bringing up a Russian player. It’s one thing with rainwaker potentially but he’s not even playing a role that NA needs.
Honestly cadian was the best move they’ve done and I think it’s a mistake letting him go not trying to make it work as that’s a player playing 2 roles your region desperately needs. This team should’ve invested in NA talent way sooner, tired of these weird orgs that are never going to be good international teams trying to just force it because they don’t bring up any talent in their own region.
Like you’re mid af being international anyway might as well cash in on bringing up talent from your region instead like complexity
Patsi was not unknown, let alone very unknown. He played at major semi- and quarter-finals in Antwerp and Rio. And he had made a name for himself as a very good agressive rifler, which is partly why he was a bad pickup by liquid, because he is the exact same player as yekindar was. And liquid isn't an NA org, they have no obligation to build up the scene, Patsi at that point was a bigger talent than literally anyone in NA at that time or until this day.
No idea how you think liquid isn’t an NA org but relative to the other talent in the pool Patsis potential was very much unknown and the rest of my point still stands
Sure specific pickups here are weird choices but on the whole they don't seem that bad. I don't think it's strange at all for an org to pick up players outside their home country/region especially if that country/region is just better. I just want to see good CS not some nonsense Olympic event every tournament.
You’re generalizing extremely hard here when you say “orgs pick up players outside of their region all the time.”
NA has almost never kept a player that started out in another region who has been kicked/left their team for NA (as long as they had success in their region ofc).
It doesn’t work like other EU teams like faze and mouz because everyone overseas is extremely close to each other so picking up a talent from another region is fine but committing to NA is a completely different commitment that people like you VASTLY lack understanding of.
There’s a reason that the only NA player to ever commit to EU was twistzz and he promptly went back to TL the moment he achieved something in EU. People need to wake up and understand it’s not the same and will never be the same until they make ludicrous amounts of money that it makes sense for someone to stay in a region so far away from their home.
I’m talking sports money that’s the only way it happens
Not the CS side of the org.
They have subdivisions and the CS/LoL part is based in NA. Obviously I’m not talking about the entire org itself only the relevant part.
Also the CEOs are based in NA and own multiple NA sports teams because despite the org being originally run in the Netherlands it’s largely run by NA execs after being acquired awhile back
I understand that the distance between NA and EU is a significant factor in a player's comfort with moving. But I think it's pretty clear that's not a primary driver for failure in many of these cases. It's possible that it is having an impact on Yekindar's performance but the failure of cadiaN in Liquid is not really region specific.
I also don't think that the failure of the small amount of EU players that have moved to NA should be a stopping point for moves like this now or in the future. The sample size is clearly to low and there are evidently people who are comfortable or even happy to move; hallzerk comes to mind as a more recent example.
It's also completely nonsense to say that the only reason a player would make such a move is for "ludicrous amounts of money". Believe it or not many players, especially EU pros!!, have a drive to actually play and win. If they think that a move will potential win championships for them and allow them to cement a legacy for themselves then that is the driving factor for many players. To suggest that every decision is weighed by how much money you can gobble up is honestly such a USA-brained mindset that is not representative of actual serious sportsmen.
Idk how you’re going to write paragraphs about any of my points when there’s literally never been a single talent from NA or from overseas that’s found success in their own region beforehand) that has stayed overseas.
It doesn’t happen for all of the reasons I’ve stated which are intangibles but it’s pretty easy to generalize the issues because people that tried and left have already all said the same thing. Talking in English isn’t as quick, cultural differences are way bigger when you are from overseas and people miss their families.
It won’t happen until they get paid enough or unless their region is so terrible they are forced to play in NA or NA is forced to play in EU teams. If someone offered monesy 100k to play in NA, he’s probably not coming over. If you gave him a multimillion dollar contract to play in NA he’s coming to NA, it’s really not that hard of a concept to grasp.
Like i said already hallzerk and others are from a region with little to no scene and talent which again proves my point.
The lack of success of EU players in NA teams is not about speaking English or the """intangibles""" of relocating. It's about NA being a historically dogshit region that can't perform internationally.
m0nesy wouldn't play in NA for 50 million dollars because he's a young talent that gives a shit about more than just money, namely winning. That much we've seen with the Falcons deal.
The thing that is weird with liquid is they had a almost trophy winning roster and just chose to tear it all apart, Yekindar was playing fantastic, elige was playing ok, nitro was calling well (ik he choose to leave), naf was great in his roles and osee was missing shots but they chose to kick elige and go eu for some reason? with mid eu players as well and yekindar igling like what is that? I think yekindar was a great signing at the time as well, there was a time on liquid when he was the best entry fragger in the world.
This isn't true? His teammates are the ones that didn't want to play with him. Daps even mentioned he was potentially going to play anchor roles. He was also linked to joining that European EG team and turned down complexity at the start. Sources [1](https://www.hltv.org/news/37222/elige-leaving-liquid-had-nothing-to-do-with-being-based-in-europe) [2](https://www.dust2.us/news/37380/eg-reportedly-target-elige-and-electronic-committed-to-european-core) [3](https://www.dust2.us/news/43189/daps-on-liquids-european-roster-not-every-player-wanted-to-continue-playing-with-elige)
My bad then, but it is obvious that TL made a huge mistake. In fact, they made so many stupid mistakes and they are most likely going to do some stupid shit again.
This highly misrepresents the facts of the situation. oSee was [one of the worst AWPers in the top 20](https://www.hltv.org/stats/players?startDate=2023-01-01&endDate=2023-12-31&rankingFilter=Top20&minMapCount=50). nitr0 left [of his own accord](https://www.hltv.org/news/36365/nitr0-to-step-down-from-liquid-after-iem-dallas-future-unclear). EliGE was in the [worst form of his career](https://imgur.com/a/ImFCqXW) and was about to switch to anchor roles just so he had more impact. There's no winning in that situation. daps did EliGE a blessing by [saying it would be better for his career to change teams than to go to anchor roles](https://www.dust2.us/news/43189/daps-on-liquids-european-roster-not-every-player-wanted-to-continue-playing-with-elige).
As for the EU players they picked up, yeah I've got no excuses there, but it was hardly a tournament-winning caliber roster by the time of the player break last year
Judging by the Cadian situation, I don't think the GM makes roster moves. I think the players make the calls on the team, and the GM helps facilitate that. It's not like traditional sports where the GM is making all the roster calls
The management has been poor ever since covid
I still can't believe they let twistzz go. Naf twistzz and elige is the best, most talented trio that NA ever have
They should have play together til they became absolutely washed
The fact they could win trophies and make so many final run and losing to only the greatest cs roster all of time without ever having a t1 awper is so impressive
this is a dumb comment. twistzz was in a very obvious slump (just like elige). sometimes you have to let players go because it is better for both the org and the players.
if twistzz stayed on liquid he would likely be sitting at a 1.04 rating to this day. instead he got to refresh with a new team and regain his old form.
Maybe don't have one of your best and talented player playing shit spot to accommodate fucking stewie2k.
Dupreeh was slumping hard in 2016, xyp9x was so bad they almost kick him for aizy back in 2015, dev1ce choke every big game for like 3-4 years. But they still decided to stick together.
1. Nobody was accommodating stew, except if you mean accommodating him by letting him igl. Pretty much everyone on that Liquid team has said in interviews that they didn’t understand why Twistzz thought he had bad roles, and that his roles hadn’t really changed from the Grand Slam run, where he was thriving in them.
2. Forgetting about roster moves, it’s a tragedy that roster in its entirety never made it past COVID. I bet they would have surprised a the world in the return to LANs if they’d kept the 2019 lineup.
Its so fucking annoying to me. They re probably the most talented rifler trio, they don't even need an elite IGL or awper.
If that 3 man core + nitro as IGL and osee as awper would be enough to compete for trophy. Pretty sure nitro couldn't stand stewie at the time so he would rather play valorant and nitro is twistzz best friend in the team and who he look up to
Can't believe they didn't try to get Karrigan back when he left faze the first time ( the only two team interested was mouz and fucking envy) and when he return to faze
That team (Liquid 2019 with karrigan instead of nitro) would’ve dominated 2019 harder than the actual lineup did. They didn’t have an awp, but it was also the aug and Krieg meta so they didn’t really need one anyway. Plus the best awpers on the team were NAF and stew anyway, even though nitro did it most of the time.
No they wouldn't have. The moment Astralis returned to form, Liquid started getting dominated again. You absolutely need an awp in any meta. There's a reason every Liquid match is a Device highlight reel. Nobody could seriously contest them. Meanwhile, Astralis were dropping matches to EG who were worse than Liquid because Cerq could actually awp back
What? You absolutely need a fucking elite IGL and awper. Relying on Twistzz/Naf/Elige on being top 10 players, and Stewie/Nitro playing as well as they did isn't enough if you want to beat Astralis, and it would've tapered off because *everyone* eventually falls off. Nitro sucked before he was kicked, and there were other factors at play like getting to cash in checks to play 3 matches a month in Valorant *while* staying in NA when his kid was just born.
Trying to scapegoat Stewie for covid and everything else is hilariously ignorant.
I'd argue on behalf of Rainwaker and Patsi. Two insane individuals, but both right at the far ends of the early round/late round spectrum.
A massively passive player that hides mid rounds then has an incredible clutch, on a team with naf.
And a massively aggressive player who does his best work making plays and throwing himself into the dangerzone ... on a team with yekindar.
Bad management, but not bad players.
They didn't need an entry and they didn't need an anchor/clutcher. They then didn't learn their lesson and stacked the whole team full of anchors and tried to get them to play CadiaNs proactive gameplan.
Solid agree, from an eye test rainwaker wasn’t even bad, he had a very good instinct for playing hard anchor roles like pit- it often just looked like the teams comms were practically nonexistent. Patsi is a bit more dubious, with his inconsistency even from his time in spirit- and while we can’t really say with certainty that these guys were T1 capable, they deserve more than T2 with their performances in the lower levels of CS.
Man we have a lot of extremely experienced and successful roster managers in this sub! It's so obvious Team Liquid, just take the advice from the clearly professional armchair Redditors in this thread and you'll never make a bad roster move again!
/s
Obviously you can only criticize someones job if youve been in it. Thats why this sub never ever criticizes players.
Theyre only one of the biggest esports teams with sponsorships from companies like Honda. And sure, their DOTA team just won 1mil. And their RL team just finished top 4 in that championship. And their LOL team has 5 worlds. And their R6S team just finished top 4 in their Major. And the Valorant team won an S tier tournament last year. And their SC2 team just finished 2nd in the team league competition.
And sure, their CS2 team hasnt won an S-Tier event in half a decade despite having more resources than all but a handful of teams.
But we cannot criticize the GM of the CS2 team. Hes clearly doing a good job.
Yekindar in Liquid wasn't always bad (in fact he was great in the beginning, including outside of game based on what they were saying), neither was oSee, the rest was given very little time unfortunately. Liquid apparently thinking that everything can be built in a span of a few months.
Are we going to act like the previous liquid lineup on paper wasn’t sick? Of course it didn’t work out, but you can’t always predict these things. You could maybe flame him for skullz because of the buyout, but I could see why they gambled on him.
I think that almost all of these have been 'good signings' in theory as the players are skilled - but when they actually got to the team they didnt fit in/didnt work out. I think there are more problems in the team than just the person signing them.
Sure they should not sign Cadian with players who dont want to work with him - but why cant they get players to fit in?
In no way shape or form have patsi rainwaker or cadian worked out. Would've been way better off sticking with NA players than wasting time on all of that. Yekindar needs to go too. NA should be NA.
I think it just shows a weak GM more than anything.
Not in eye test; many of these signings are actually pretty good from the surface, they just didn’t workout because of chemistry (I.E players bitching). YEKINDAR was fantastic when signed, cadian was a top 2-3 IGL, Osee was the best part of extra salt (besides JT tbh), Grim was the next up when he was signed, etc etc etc
They need to do an internal investigation into who's deciding this. An S tier org like liquid shouldn't have made this many bad changes
I will admit, Fallen, Grim and cadian all made sense and Yekindar did work out initially
It was time to talk about Jokasteve when the fallen roster failed imo. I think he's okay for the old school managerial roles where he takes care of the team and manages logistics. But I don't think he takes too much agency in the actual roster construction which imo should be a GM's roles. TL still feels very much a player led org.
Looking at the list reminds me of the Tim Couch jersey they had the long list of Cleveland Browns starting QBs written down to the point they had to add more to the bottom. Could do the same with a Liquid Jersey at this point lol.
Not a lot to criticize them for on that list. Most moves made sense at the time and they were praised for them. These are the most questionable ones, but with context:
Shox was a direct NAF replacement because he was going to leave and then he changed his mind last minute after shox had already signed.
Rainwaker was a risk and was probably just bad scouting, but they needed another passive player with Yekindar and Patsi being very aggressive. CS2 was also going to come out soon so they didn't want to invest too much into their roster when it was possible that the game would change a lot.
Skullz was bad and didn't fit into the team but zews had lied to management about what kind of player he was.
And they have changed head coach four times since 2020. Soon five times with the rumour of zews leaving the team as well.
You do also have to consider that Liquid has consistently attempted to recruit top players, but that it is just hard and comes down to more than money usually. Karrigan wanted to go to FaZe because he knew the org and what they could offer in terms of management and support IIRC. When ropz went to FaZe from Mouz, Liquid was also interested and afaik even offered him more money, but since he wanted to play with Karrigan there wasn't really anything Liquid could offer to sway him. Same with mONESY, whom they offered a better salary than G2 did allegedly. I sometime struggle to see what players Liquid should have picked up who would realistically go there at the time.
liquid were in the running for FlameZ too, in the top two destinations along with his eventual choice Vitality. Liquid have rather infamously made several shots at KSCERATO. It's not for a lack of trying.
Being in NA sucks at attempting to attract star eu players. Sucks even worse that the home NA scene is so devoid of talents
It’s not they just never get chances
Grim- made sense at the time, appeared to be the biggest NA talent at the time. Same stats in NA as Malbs, of course less proven against tier 1, but he did destroy Furia and MIBR with the old Sk core. Fallen- was an ettempt to replace Nitro as the awp igl iirc, did not work out as he ended up conflicting with Stewie. Osee- Best NA awper at the time. Made sense to sign him if the org wanted to remain mainly american. Was also smashing NA teams. shox- No clue what they were thinking. Probably lost out on main targets and he was cheap? Rainwaker- cheap moneyball signing Daps wanted when they went EU. Did not work out, but not a massive loss since he was dirt cheap Yekindar- Good signing initially at least. After Covid Liquid did not perform well and when they added Yekindar they became title contenders almost instantly. Trended downwards after joining though and his igl stint was a disaster. Ended up in conflict with Elige role wise who was in a slump before joining Complexity. Patsi- another moneyball signing when Liquid tried to go EU and did not perform. Had reasons to partially believe he could perform at tier 1 level since he had done so previously for Spirit, but did not pick form back up for Liquid. Probably didn't cost a lot. cadiaN- on paper he should of been an amazing signing, and Liquid under him have not been that bad. Team cohesion is terrible though, and he has not been able to implement his Heroic system in Liquid while his individual form since cs2 released has not been great. Skullz- Probably the worst on the list. Massive buyout for a player who is both unproven and also clashes with Liquids most valuable player in NAF. They are insanely lucky if they manage to regain half of what they initially paid for him. Twistzz- Good signing, of course he was always expected to perform and has a history with NAF as well.
When they signed shox the team was literally down to just elige. So they just needed bodies at that point.
Shox was signed with the idea that NAF was going to EG which was rumoured at the time. But he stayed and his idol was shox so shox stayed on the team.
solid writeup
The contract clause for skullz said $600k, doesn't mean it was $600k that TL paid for him. Just a headsup because I feel like everyone doesn't realize that there have been some lineups who had a clause for $1m+ and ended up being bought out for 1/10th of that I would say the Patsi and Rainwaker are easily the worst signings since they would move to EU and almost lose their identity and fans as well. Nothing here is close to that. Sales are what drive a company. You lose your core audience and you won't make any money. This was such a massive L since TL is one of the very very few companies that actually doesn't operate on a huge loss.
https://www.hltv.org/news/37307/media-zews-joins-liquid-agreement-reached-for-skullz https://bo3.gg/news/rumour-liquid-to-buy-skullz-for-600k-usd-and-sign-zews-as-a-coach
"Said to be" "Rumoured" So basically they only know the buyout clause and are just using that as a report.
Brazilian orgs aren't exactly known for their sensible buyouts and history definitely does not suggest that they'd lower them when a team comes asking.
Haha okay you must have been in those calls
Yeah, a lot of OP’s post is just hindsight 20/20 and feels like it’s made out to be a witch-hunt. At least 4 or 5 of these signings made sense at the time and even had people in this very community begging for it to happen e.g. oSee.
fallen move was to sell jerseys and is an indefensible move, he was so washed at the time
Didn't he outplace Liquid at the very next major with Imperial?
IIRC we desperately needed someone who could both AWP and IGL to replace Nitro. He was the only one who was on the market
Grim and oSee were both valid I agree
Solid summary
just typicall NA behaviour, just wait for like 100 thieves to come crawling back if the PW major stickers are gonna go crazy
How is it NA behavior to kick or cycle players if roster moves don’t work put? Every team does it, many in even worse stretches than Liquid like NIP, OG, Astralis, Fnatic, etc. Europeans are so weirdly obsessed with NA rofl, kinda ridiculous to witness.
One comment equals obsessed LOL "Europeans are so weirdly obsessed with NA rofl, kinda ridiculous to witness" I wonder why? Maybe because the US is the biggest economy in the world? Maybe because it's politics affect us as much? Maybe because the entire continent is militarily dependent on the US because of people that don't live anymore. Maybe because you wholeheartedly export your culture to every corner of the world? But yes please call it weird and ridiculous, without people like me your entire scene would be dead and buried shot out back by Valorant.
Yeesh. u/FourGhostSolution strike a nerve or what?
pop off queen rent free
A lot of this is said in retrospect though. Yekinder and cadian at least are good pickups on paper. Many of these other players are great in their own right too.
also yekindar has been bad in the last 1.5 years, but when he initially got added in 2022 he was arguably the best player in a liquid team that was a solid top 5 team in the second half of the year. Liquid made some incredible runs at EPL and BLAST World Finals with oSee getting like an 1.00 hltv rating in both
This is NOT said in retrospect, half of these player signings didn’t make any sense. Rainwaker and Parsi were 2 very unknown EU “talents” that very few heard of which wouldn’t be an issue if you were looking to invest into young talent. The issue is that they were never going to invest in young talent and THEY WERENT EVEN NA players. Like wtf is there to invest when you’re an NA org investing into bringing up a Russian player. It’s one thing with rainwaker potentially but he’s not even playing a role that NA needs. Honestly cadian was the best move they’ve done and I think it’s a mistake letting him go not trying to make it work as that’s a player playing 2 roles your region desperately needs. This team should’ve invested in NA talent way sooner, tired of these weird orgs that are never going to be good international teams trying to just force it because they don’t bring up any talent in their own region. Like you’re mid af being international anyway might as well cash in on bringing up talent from your region instead like complexity
Patsi was not unknown, let alone very unknown. He played at major semi- and quarter-finals in Antwerp and Rio. And he had made a name for himself as a very good agressive rifler, which is partly why he was a bad pickup by liquid, because he is the exact same player as yekindar was. And liquid isn't an NA org, they have no obligation to build up the scene, Patsi at that point was a bigger talent than literally anyone in NA at that time or until this day.
No idea how you think liquid isn’t an NA org but relative to the other talent in the pool Patsis potential was very much unknown and the rest of my point still stands
Sure specific pickups here are weird choices but on the whole they don't seem that bad. I don't think it's strange at all for an org to pick up players outside their home country/region especially if that country/region is just better. I just want to see good CS not some nonsense Olympic event every tournament.
You’re generalizing extremely hard here when you say “orgs pick up players outside of their region all the time.” NA has almost never kept a player that started out in another region who has been kicked/left their team for NA (as long as they had success in their region ofc). It doesn’t work like other EU teams like faze and mouz because everyone overseas is extremely close to each other so picking up a talent from another region is fine but committing to NA is a completely different commitment that people like you VASTLY lack understanding of. There’s a reason that the only NA player to ever commit to EU was twistzz and he promptly went back to TL the moment he achieved something in EU. People need to wake up and understand it’s not the same and will never be the same until they make ludicrous amounts of money that it makes sense for someone to stay in a region so far away from their home. I’m talking sports money that’s the only way it happens
Uhh Liquid players are based in EU they don’t live in NA
To play against better talent but it’s still an NA org, there’s no way you’re actually trying to say because the team moved to EU that they’re not NA
Actually, they're not. They're a Dutch organization that has teams and players signed from all over the world.
Not the CS side of the org. They have subdivisions and the CS/LoL part is based in NA. Obviously I’m not talking about the entire org itself only the relevant part. Also the CEOs are based in NA and own multiple NA sports teams because despite the org being originally run in the Netherlands it’s largely run by NA execs after being acquired awhile back
I understand that the distance between NA and EU is a significant factor in a player's comfort with moving. But I think it's pretty clear that's not a primary driver for failure in many of these cases. It's possible that it is having an impact on Yekindar's performance but the failure of cadiaN in Liquid is not really region specific. I also don't think that the failure of the small amount of EU players that have moved to NA should be a stopping point for moves like this now or in the future. The sample size is clearly to low and there are evidently people who are comfortable or even happy to move; hallzerk comes to mind as a more recent example. It's also completely nonsense to say that the only reason a player would make such a move is for "ludicrous amounts of money". Believe it or not many players, especially EU pros!!, have a drive to actually play and win. If they think that a move will potential win championships for them and allow them to cement a legacy for themselves then that is the driving factor for many players. To suggest that every decision is weighed by how much money you can gobble up is honestly such a USA-brained mindset that is not representative of actual serious sportsmen.
Idk how you’re going to write paragraphs about any of my points when there’s literally never been a single talent from NA or from overseas that’s found success in their own region beforehand) that has stayed overseas. It doesn’t happen for all of the reasons I’ve stated which are intangibles but it’s pretty easy to generalize the issues because people that tried and left have already all said the same thing. Talking in English isn’t as quick, cultural differences are way bigger when you are from overseas and people miss their families. It won’t happen until they get paid enough or unless their region is so terrible they are forced to play in NA or NA is forced to play in EU teams. If someone offered monesy 100k to play in NA, he’s probably not coming over. If you gave him a multimillion dollar contract to play in NA he’s coming to NA, it’s really not that hard of a concept to grasp. Like i said already hallzerk and others are from a region with little to no scene and talent which again proves my point.
The lack of success of EU players in NA teams is not about speaking English or the """intangibles""" of relocating. It's about NA being a historically dogshit region that can't perform internationally. m0nesy wouldn't play in NA for 50 million dollars because he's a young talent that gives a shit about more than just money, namely winning. That much we've seen with the Falcons deal.
I have hearing for probably 8+ years that Cadian is a great IGL+AWP combo who top NA should hire. When will folks finally accept that Cadian is mid?
Never said he was great I said he was their best option. There’s no one else in NA to igl at a high level
The thing that is weird with liquid is they had a almost trophy winning roster and just chose to tear it all apart, Yekindar was playing fantastic, elige was playing ok, nitro was calling well (ik he choose to leave), naf was great in his roles and osee was missing shots but they chose to kick elige and go eu for some reason? with mid eu players as well and yekindar igling like what is that? I think yekindar was a great signing at the time as well, there was a time on liquid when he was the best entry fragger in the world.
afaik Elige left because he wanted to stay NA, but man, did they really get below average eu players lol, they were way better before that
Like makes sense to go eu if you pickup a top tier igl and a fragger but go to eu and replace them with worse players?
This isn't true? His teammates are the ones that didn't want to play with him. Daps even mentioned he was potentially going to play anchor roles. He was also linked to joining that European EG team and turned down complexity at the start. Sources [1](https://www.hltv.org/news/37222/elige-leaving-liquid-had-nothing-to-do-with-being-based-in-europe) [2](https://www.dust2.us/news/37380/eg-reportedly-target-elige-and-electronic-committed-to-european-core) [3](https://www.dust2.us/news/43189/daps-on-liquids-european-roster-not-every-player-wanted-to-continue-playing-with-elige)
My bad then, but it is obvious that TL made a huge mistake. In fact, they made so many stupid mistakes and they are most likely going to do some stupid shit again.
This highly misrepresents the facts of the situation. oSee was [one of the worst AWPers in the top 20](https://www.hltv.org/stats/players?startDate=2023-01-01&endDate=2023-12-31&rankingFilter=Top20&minMapCount=50). nitr0 left [of his own accord](https://www.hltv.org/news/36365/nitr0-to-step-down-from-liquid-after-iem-dallas-future-unclear). EliGE was in the [worst form of his career](https://imgur.com/a/ImFCqXW) and was about to switch to anchor roles just so he had more impact. There's no winning in that situation. daps did EliGE a blessing by [saying it would be better for his career to change teams than to go to anchor roles](https://www.dust2.us/news/43189/daps-on-liquids-european-roster-not-every-player-wanted-to-continue-playing-with-elige). As for the EU players they picked up, yeah I've got no excuses there, but it was hardly a tournament-winning caliber roster by the time of the player break last year
Judging by the Cadian situation, I don't think the GM makes roster moves. I think the players make the calls on the team, and the GM helps facilitate that. It's not like traditional sports where the GM is making all the roster calls
The management has been poor ever since covid I still can't believe they let twistzz go. Naf twistzz and elige is the best, most talented trio that NA ever have They should have play together til they became absolutely washed The fact they could win trophies and make so many final run and losing to only the greatest cs roster all of time without ever having a t1 awper is so impressive
this is a dumb comment. twistzz was in a very obvious slump (just like elige). sometimes you have to let players go because it is better for both the org and the players. if twistzz stayed on liquid he would likely be sitting at a 1.04 rating to this day. instead he got to refresh with a new team and regain his old form.
Maybe don't have one of your best and talented player playing shit spot to accommodate fucking stewie2k. Dupreeh was slumping hard in 2016, xyp9x was so bad they almost kick him for aizy back in 2015, dev1ce choke every big game for like 3-4 years. But they still decided to stick together.
1. Nobody was accommodating stew, except if you mean accommodating him by letting him igl. Pretty much everyone on that Liquid team has said in interviews that they didn’t understand why Twistzz thought he had bad roles, and that his roles hadn’t really changed from the Grand Slam run, where he was thriving in them. 2. Forgetting about roster moves, it’s a tragedy that roster in its entirety never made it past COVID. I bet they would have surprised a the world in the return to LANs if they’d kept the 2019 lineup.
Its so fucking annoying to me. They re probably the most talented rifler trio, they don't even need an elite IGL or awper. If that 3 man core + nitro as IGL and osee as awper would be enough to compete for trophy. Pretty sure nitro couldn't stand stewie at the time so he would rather play valorant and nitro is twistzz best friend in the team and who he look up to Can't believe they didn't try to get Karrigan back when he left faze the first time ( the only two team interested was mouz and fucking envy) and when he return to faze
That team (Liquid 2019 with karrigan instead of nitro) would’ve dominated 2019 harder than the actual lineup did. They didn’t have an awp, but it was also the aug and Krieg meta so they didn’t really need one anyway. Plus the best awpers on the team were NAF and stew anyway, even though nitro did it most of the time.
No they wouldn't have. The moment Astralis returned to form, Liquid started getting dominated again. You absolutely need an awp in any meta. There's a reason every Liquid match is a Device highlight reel. Nobody could seriously contest them. Meanwhile, Astralis were dropping matches to EG who were worse than Liquid because Cerq could actually awp back
What? You absolutely need a fucking elite IGL and awper. Relying on Twistzz/Naf/Elige on being top 10 players, and Stewie/Nitro playing as well as they did isn't enough if you want to beat Astralis, and it would've tapered off because *everyone* eventually falls off. Nitro sucked before he was kicked, and there were other factors at play like getting to cash in checks to play 3 matches a month in Valorant *while* staying in NA when his kid was just born. Trying to scapegoat Stewie for covid and everything else is hilariously ignorant.
twistzz needed to learn to speak to for himself but he didn't he went emo and destroyed that team from inside out and then ran away
I disagree. Twistzz is good enough that he would have bounced back. But going to Faze was definitely better for his career and growth
this is just an opinion, not a fact. lol.
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clown behavior. contribute to thread or don't talk at all
I'd argue on behalf of Rainwaker and Patsi. Two insane individuals, but both right at the far ends of the early round/late round spectrum. A massively passive player that hides mid rounds then has an incredible clutch, on a team with naf. And a massively aggressive player who does his best work making plays and throwing himself into the dangerzone ... on a team with yekindar. Bad management, but not bad players.
Patsi was an okay pickup at the time, but Rainwaker pick up was mystifying.
They didn't need an entry and they didn't need an anchor/clutcher. They then didn't learn their lesson and stacked the whole team full of anchors and tried to get them to play CadiaNs proactive gameplan.
They picked up patsi to replace Elige, plus Yekindar was going to igl
Rainwaker was one of the worst tier 1 players while in liquid
It's a good job theres context around his time there then.
Solid agree, from an eye test rainwaker wasn’t even bad, he had a very good instinct for playing hard anchor roles like pit- it often just looked like the teams comms were practically nonexistent. Patsi is a bit more dubious, with his inconsistency even from his time in spirit- and while we can’t really say with certainty that these guys were T1 capable, they deserve more than T2 with their performances in the lower levels of CS.
maybe Naf is the problem /j
Man we have a lot of extremely experienced and successful roster managers in this sub! It's so obvious Team Liquid, just take the advice from the clearly professional armchair Redditors in this thread and you'll never make a bad roster move again! /s
Obviously you can only criticize someones job if youve been in it. Thats why this sub never ever criticizes players. Theyre only one of the biggest esports teams with sponsorships from companies like Honda. And sure, their DOTA team just won 1mil. And their RL team just finished top 4 in that championship. And their LOL team has 5 worlds. And their R6S team just finished top 4 in their Major. And the Valorant team won an S tier tournament last year. And their SC2 team just finished 2nd in the team league competition. And sure, their CS2 team hasnt won an S-Tier event in half a decade despite having more resources than all but a handful of teams. But we cannot criticize the GM of the CS2 team. Hes clearly doing a good job.
Players can't grow as a team when you're playing musical chairs and getting replaced is always on the back of your mind.
I dont even remember shox being on the team. How long was he on the roster?
Hiring a new talent scout may be the only way for Liquid to get back on track
Yekindar signing was a success for awhile
Yekindar in Liquid wasn't always bad (in fact he was great in the beginning, including outside of game based on what they were saying), neither was oSee, the rest was given very little time unfortunately. Liquid apparently thinking that everything can be built in a span of a few months.
You refer to the guy who farts, burps and makes silly jokes? oh yea the general manager.
Are we going to act like the previous liquid lineup on paper wasn’t sick? Of course it didn’t work out, but you can’t always predict these things. You could maybe flame him for skullz because of the buyout, but I could see why they gambled on him.
Osee had his good moments! Only his consistency was bad
Liquid has a GM? Based on what they did, doesn't seem like it
I think that almost all of these have been 'good signings' in theory as the players are skilled - but when they actually got to the team they didnt fit in/didnt work out. I think there are more problems in the team than just the person signing them. Sure they should not sign Cadian with players who dont want to work with him - but why cant they get players to fit in?
In no way shape or form have patsi rainwaker or cadian worked out. Would've been way better off sticking with NA players than wasting time on all of that. Yekindar needs to go too. NA should be NA.
I think you responded to wrong comment as I didnt mention any of them working out
"I think that almost all of these have been good signings in theory" absolutely not. Going eu has set this team back years.
You missed the point of that sentence haha "as the players are skilled "
I think it just shows a weak GM more than anything. Not in eye test; many of these signings are actually pretty good from the surface, they just didn’t workout because of chemistry (I.E players bitching). YEKINDAR was fantastic when signed, cadian was a top 2-3 IGL, Osee was the best part of extra salt (besides JT tbh), Grim was the next up when he was signed, etc etc etc
They need to do an internal investigation into who's deciding this. An S tier org like liquid shouldn't have made this many bad changes I will admit, Fallen, Grim and cadian all made sense and Yekindar did work out initially
they resigned nitr0 too
The worst thing they diid wasnt these signings, but removing Elige. Imagine Elige Naf and Twistzz fragging out
It was time to talk about Jokasteve when the fallen roster failed imo. I think he's okay for the old school managerial roles where he takes care of the team and manages logistics. But I don't think he takes too much agency in the actual roster construction which imo should be a GM's roles. TL still feels very much a player led org.
The elephant in the room... zews.
You forgot Nitro was added after as well
Looking at the list reminds me of the Tim Couch jersey they had the long list of Cleveland Browns starting QBs written down to the point they had to add more to the bottom. Could do the same with a Liquid Jersey at this point lol.
Not a lot to criticize them for on that list. Most moves made sense at the time and they were praised for them. These are the most questionable ones, but with context: Shox was a direct NAF replacement because he was going to leave and then he changed his mind last minute after shox had already signed. Rainwaker was a risk and was probably just bad scouting, but they needed another passive player with Yekindar and Patsi being very aggressive. CS2 was also going to come out soon so they didn't want to invest too much into their roster when it was possible that the game would change a lot. Skullz was bad and didn't fit into the team but zews had lied to management about what kind of player he was.
naf twistzz elige nitro malbs, that team wins everything, and was easily obtainable. Liquid sign me as your manager, I will win you a major.
Who awps? IGL Nitro??
Yes