Team Liquid’s Counter-Strike initiative continues to fall apart at the seams. According to Dust2.us’s Scoobster, Liquid’s head coach Damian “daps” Steele has been canned by the organization. There’s currently no public word on who will replace him.
Three months ago, Team Liquid blew up their long-standing status as a North American core roster to add two Europeans: Aleks “Rainwaker” Petrov and Robert “Patsi” Isyanov. After a series of underwhelming performances, Rainwaker has been officially benched, and Patsi is also reportedly gone from the organization.
The shuffle comes after a series of abject disasters when the prestige of the forward roster is considered. Liquid placed 7th-9th in BLAST Fall Groups and bombed out of Gamers8 and the ESL Pro League Season 18 Playoffs. They also failed to qualify for IEM Cologne. It’s all a far cry from the Intel Grand Slam-winning days.
The team is certainly in disarray. Rainwaker was benched before the BLAST Fall Showdown, and daps was forced to stand in and play for that event. Recent rumors have tied the team to Danish world-class IGL Casper “cadiaN” Møller, but even with a veteran’s steady hand on the team, it still would not look good: Liquid will need to replace more than an IGL if their hope is to have a great run in the budding CS2 era of Counter-Strike.
The three months of turmoil heading into CS2 has depressed fans of the tenured North American squad. Many have turned their sights to Complexity, who have delighted them by unexpectedly making it to the grand finals of IEM Sydney, featuring ex-Liquid star Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski on their roster. As long as Liquid stays stagnant, they’ll continue to slowly bleed out: they’ve most of their fans, they’re tumbling down the HLTV rankings, and now they’ve allegedly lost the architect of their European-majority roster.
