Team Liquid’s offseason rebuild has failed to catch fire in time for Counter-Strike 2’s first Major, with the North American-based international squad falling at the final hurdle in the American RMR final today.
Complexity overcame a loss in map one to sweep the best-of-three against Liquid, thus ensuring North America would be represented in Denmark after the first four spots were nabbed by Brazilian teams paiN, Imperial, FURIA, and Legacy. The loss means Liquid’s streak of eight Major attendances in a row has been halted.
It’s a devastating blow to the young roster which only formed three months ago during one of the most tumultuous offseasons in Counter-Strike history. Led by ex-Heroic’s Casper “cadiaN” Møller, the Liquid roster was heavily hyped following its formation but struggled to battle its way through early regional qualifiers. The team has only attended one offline tournament since the rebuild at BLAST Premier Spring Groups and apart from the odd online qualifier has had limited time on the server to really get going.
Nevertheless, it was expected Liquid would qualify for the Danish Major with relative ease. With five slots up for grabs and a very strong roster on paper against lower-tiered squads from the Americas, it came as a shock then to see Liquid need to return on day four on the brink of disaster. Even more surprising was their opponent: Complexity, the NA darlings who had taken the CS2 scene by storm and were only recently reacquired by owner Jason Lake.
Both lost a single series to FURIA at the RMR, but due to the Swiss format and the fact only five squads would qualify, they met with a 2-1 record in the elimination game—something Complexity’s Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski wanted to remind viewers about. “I feel really bad for them: it’s a crappy format and unfortunate that we both had to play FURIA and face off against each other here,” EliGE said in his post-match interview.
It’s tough to say where Liquid goes from here. The team has had little experience in offline CS2 so far and many could argue the squad needs more time to gel, especially given the team’s formation from four separate CS:GO rosters of differing calibers. At the same time, failing to make the Copenhagen Major has meant sweeping changes for teams and Liquid may be too big of an organization to allow such a missed opportunity.
Liquid will likely be sticking in the interim given they are expected to play the BLAST Spring Showdown later this week. Their next expected offline appearance is early April’s Skyesports Masters in India.
