EliGE: "If someone comes on the market there could always be a roster change"
Although moves to Complexity and FaZe seemed to spell the end of Liquid and EliGE, the American returned to the organisation where he made his name late last year.
Now heading into a new year and into the playoffs of their first event, EliGE reflects on a 2025 he says was a "struggle" as well as providing insight into what Liquid needs to do next in order to continue to grow as a team.
"Last year was definitely a struggle"
Looking back on last year, it was maybe a bit of a struggle from your POV, how are you looking back on it?
Last year was definitely a struggle, I'd say. It definitely wasn't the best year, but it wasn't the worst either. It was the start of the journey of me going to Europe and starting some new things, and I don't think that will always have the best start, which is fine as long as I keep going and improve every day.
I think that's what's happening right now, it didn't work out on FaZe, but we have something we can improve upon here. We haven't had the best results yet, but we also haven't had a lot of time to practice since then because we had to get the five matches ASAP, and that doesn't make for good first officials. That's how I'd sum it up, anyway. I don't want to call it a year in waiting, but a transitional year, I guess.
Would you say that the first few months on Liquid, because of that rush, has prevented you from fully gelling as team or have you now?
We're still working on things. It was obviously worse when I joined because there was a lot less time, but we had time at a bootcamp during the Major, and we thought we'd do better there because of that, but it just shows that you can't just have a few good weeks of practice and expect that everything is going to go super well.
All the other teams have been together so long, and I'm sure they've also had these weeks of good practice just to get stomped. You have to keep learning, look at FURIA, they had a rough first half of the year and then turned up in the second half. I see it in the same way, and I think we can have a similar thing to them once we get the structure that everyone is happy with.
EliGE's move to FaZe for 2025 didn't work as planned. Photo: Stephanie LindgrenIn that sense, we're not too far off it being a similar amount of time from when FURIA formed to getting really good and you returning to Liquid. You're already in a playoffs, so does that give you the confidence you're on that right track for that kind of growth?
Relatively, yeah. We've only had two matches so far, and we played decent in them, but we could've been better. We haven't taken down any of the top teams yet, so that would be the goal and that would be a really good start heading into IEM Krakow.
That's our goal, to take down strong opponents, including the one we'll be picking during the draft ideally, and take that strong form into the next tournament.
Assuming you'll be going for Falcons because of the stand-in situation, would that have been the case if they were at full strength?
I think we might've aimed for them anyway, but although we're all discussing it, I'm letting flashie and siuhy decide. Whatever they want and think is best is what we're going to go with, and I think it's a good idea because of the stand-in and coach situation.
You mentioned flashie there; this is his first tier one coaching gig, so how has he settled into the role in your eyes? I remember seeing somewhere that there was a stat about you have a high win rate after taking a timeout.
It's been really good so far. I hadn't seen that stat but it wouldn't surprise me, every time we do a review and we listen to the timeouts he says something very good, very clear, and makes a solid plan. That's everything you can ask for, really, so he's doing a good job inside the game.
He also has the big responsibility of making sure we're gelling when we're not in officials, and he's been doing a good job there as well. He makes sure the structure is something that he's happy with and siuhy is comfortable calling, which is always a balance and every team has that dynamic, because it would be ideal if they were completely aligned, but not every team has that. They have to find a middle ground, and ours has been going pretty well.
There's a lot of firepower in the team, and that's shown in the games so far during Bounty, is that the best case scenario for you guys?
Ideally yeah, but we also want some more consistency, of course. When you're going into a game you want to have something you can rely on, but having a group of strong players who can also turn up is great. We just need everyone to fire at the same time, otherwise we won't win tournaments.
We need to have the consistent factors, too, if we're playing one game and they keep hitting the A site, then the A and Mid players will have more kills, but if they go towards B and we're not fragging as hard, it all becomes harder.
We also need consistency with the players who are moving around the most. I should be more consistent, NertZ should be more consistent, ultimate should be, because we're the ones who are moving around the most on the CT side at least. But obviously, we're very lucky to have a lot of players that can shoot hard, we just need that consistency to win tournaments, and especially myself.
There's one round in particular we need to talk about, and I saw you tweet after your game that you would've bought the MP9 if you had more money, so has that UMP ace changed the way you think about the gun and your buys?
I don't think so, but I do it a lot anyway. When you're on those tough buys you can squeak out one more nade, which is what happened in this round, then that's always my thinking. I do think the MP9 is still better, though, and I think I would've done it with the MP9, too. But maybe not, maybe the fire rate would've stopped me, but obviously it was a sick round.
We all know what the ambitions of this team are, and you've mentioned consistency, but what do you think the other gaps are between yourselves and the top teams?
I think that we just have a lot less of the nuanced discussions compared to the other teams. You're always going to be in different situations and there's always slightly different nades that people use. When you've had less time to talk about those sort of things on either side, whether it's what you're doing or what the other team is doing, those are discussions you haven't had, so you'll perform slightly worse naturally.We need to have those discussions, we need that time together to do that, and that will make everyone more comfortable.
When we have more certainty towards those situations, like Vitality or FURIA have, there's just less doubt in terms of what you do to react to things. For us, that's just slightly slower, or maybe we don't come to the same conclusion, so there's things like that happening. We just need to get more into the weeds of it, which means more time, but also means more cohesion.
We've been working on how we approach parts of the map and structure our rounds a lot, the options we have, and who is the driving factor in doing that. I think we were too rigid in terms of that last year, and maybe there wasn't enough ideas flowing, so putting us in more situations where they can and we know what we want going into those rounds will promote more cohesive rounds between us.
In regards to that, Vitality won Cologne in 2024 but it took them a year and a roster change to get to the 2025 level. With the fact that a lot of teams aren't given the time to grow and roster moves can come quickly, is there any concerns that you won't be given the time because of pressure to make a change or are you confident you will get it?
It's always going to be a factor, as you said. Even during the player break, we spoke after the Major that we feel like we're on the right track and looking at the game in the right way, so as long as that's happening and we can see we're pushing forward, then that's what is most important.
Of course, if someone comes on the market, there could always be a roster change. People need to win. But the difference with some teams, is that you need to be playing at a level where you feel like you're close. Vitality were already a great team making deep runs, MOUZ are the same now where they're so close and feel like they can change little things to get them there, but even for them, there'll be some aspect of that. Even for myself in previous rosters, you just keep going until you hit the wall.
So, until we've done everything and we can keep pushing forward we will. But there's always a minimum result. We can't say that we need more time if we have five or six months of not even making it to the playoffs, there has to be some base level where it also feels good in the team. That's how it's got to be for us. Steps forward that stop it from looking like a pipe dream or a castle in the sky we're aiming for, we have to show that it's all meaningful.
