Liquid First To Reach Elimination Stage At Shanghai Major

On the second day of the event, Liquid was pitted against FlyQuest in their first best-of-three, winning which would mean instant qualification to the Elimination Stage. The game commenced with an intense map 1 on Anubis that Liquid closed out 13-9 in their favour before FlyQuest bounced back 5-13 on their map pick, Inferno. Fans were left speechless on the last map where Liquid came off as a completely different team, dominating each and every round, securing their qualification with a 13-1 victory on Nuke. The team’s Danish coach, Torbjørn "⁠mithR⁠" Nyborg, was very impressed with his team, which he expressed in an HLTV-interview afterwards.

What did Team Liquid’s coach say?

It wasn’t all praise from the coach’s side as he had his fair share of criticism to levy: “With that said, I don't think that we are anything like ourselves on that map, I feel like we play scared and we play hesitant, we are not as aggressive as we should be. We're not very annoying to play against and we need to be more in their face, make them more uncomfortable than what we did on that first map.”

However, mithR believes his team still has the potential to pull through and win it all: “It means a lot, but right now I'm happy that the harsh tone that I have in between maps seems to pay off and the players really listen and trust in what I have to give them. They trust in the game plans, they trust in the evaluations, they trust in how I want them to practice and how much I want them to practice, because we have some very very long days. I could not be happier with being in Liquid and to have all the support that I get not only from the players, but also the support staff and the leadership.”