It goes without saying that Team Liquid failed to meet expectations at the IEM Katowice 2019 Major. After advancing to the Playoffs with a 3-0 record, Liquid would face ENCE in the first round of the Major Playoffs. Everyone had Team Liquid making the finals, but they instead ended up losing 2-0 to ENCE in the first round.
Team Liquid’s struggles would not stop there. On March 11, 2019, Team Liquid played Rogue in the ECS Season 7 North America Week 1. Rogue is not considered a dominate team in any way. They are certaintly not bad players, but Rouge are not on the same level as Team Liquid. Team Liquid would play Rouge in a best of three series and it did not go as expected.
Maps (Nuke, Dust 2, Overpass)
Rogue picked Nuke as the first map followed by Team Liquid picking Dust 2. Overpass was left over and was the deciding third map of the series. Nuke was close but behind the 25 frags of Daniel “vice” Kim Rogue won the map 16-12. Vice finished the map with a 1.52 rating and a 91.6 ADR leading both teams in each category.
However, unlike Nuke, Dust 2 was not close at all. Team Liquid would run through Rogue. Team Liquid won Dust 2 16-6. Russel “Twistzz” Dulken and Keith “NAF” Markovic both played like the stars they are. NAF finished with 24 frags and a 1.69 rating, while Twistzz had 22 frags and a rating of 1.81.
Liquid Fails Again
Each team managed to win their map choice. The third and final map of the series was Overpass. At the Major, Team Liquid looked solid on Overpass and they did not show many weaknesses on this map against better teams than Rogue. The series ended in a 2-1 victory for Rogue as they ended up winning 16-8 on Overpass, knocking Team Liquid out of ECS Season 7.
Conclusion
It is shocking to see Team Liquid struggle like this. A team filled with this much talent that just two months ago beat Astralis at the iBUYPOWER Invitational in the finals is now struggling to beat teams like ENCE and Rogue. Perhaps Team Liquid simply have yet to shake off the disappointing defeat to ENCE in the Quarterfinals of IEM Katowice.
Whatever the case may be, fans of Team Liquid are hoping for an improvement sooner rather than later.
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