Liquid's player, Keith "NAF" Markovic, shared his thoughts on whether the team is satisfied with the current results at ESL Pro League Season 19 (Liquid has already secured at least an eighth-place finish) and also commented on the upcoming opponent in the tournament - Astralis. The Canadian expressed his thoughts in an interview with HLTV.
"In my previous interviews, I've mentioned that we aim to reach the top 8 or top 4, and that would be acceptable. But, as I've said before, our team has high expectations, so we would like to go further and get closer to the podium.
So, we do have a bit of tension. Maybe not tension, but I'm sure there's some competitive spirit between stavn, jabbi, and cadiaN. They probably want to beat each other. It's always fun and exciting to play against former teammates, regardless of how you ended up in your new teams. It gives them extra energy, and it gives cadiaN an extra boost.
I know cadiaN wants us to win, to be the best, and to be able to beat them [Astralis], so that also gives us extra energy. I definitely want to go further. But, on the other hand, Astralis is a serious team. We'll just try to give it our all in the game and see what happens."
NAF also discussed his feelings about the return of Dust2 to the competitive map pool. He admitted that he doesn't personally like the map.
"I don't like the map, but playing it as a team can be great. I would have liked them to add another map, but it's always joyful to see the return of an old familiar map, especially one like Dust2 because it's a symbol of Counter-Strike. Let's see how it turns out. The removal of Overpass is a bit disappointing for me; I like that map, but changes are always nice."
Yesterday, Liquid defeated FlyQuest with a score of 2:1 and advanced to the quarterfinals of ESL Pro League Season 19. On May 10th, the team will face Astralis in a match for a spot in the top 4.