NAF: "It's our last event and I'd love to win a trophy, for everyone, but especially for Grim"

Liquid have renewed confidence after upsetting the world's top side, Natus Vincere, in their opening BLAST Premier World Final series.

The only American representatives at BLAST Premier World Final, Liquid, made a statement victory in their opener with a one-sided victory on the decider map against Natus Vincere, controlling the CT side of Inferno before closing things out on the attack to proceed through to the second round of the upper bracket while knocking the Major champions to the elimination matches.

Following Liquid's upset victory we caught up with the highest-rated player in the series, Keith "⁠NAF⁠" Markovic, to talk about some of the keys to their big win, particularly his and Jake "⁠Stewie2K⁠" Yip's rock solid defense on Inferno's B site and Banana.

We also asked the Canadian player about his thoughts on his and Richard "⁠shox⁠" Papillon's roles working out if the rumors of the Frenchman's move to the North American organization were to come to fruition, and how a big victory like the one against Andrey "⁠B1ad3⁠" Gorodenskiy's men has affected the team's confidence.

Let's jump straight into the game. I would particularly like to talk about Inferno, but can you run me through the first couple of maps from your point of view first?

Overpass, for us right now, with our current team state... I probably shouldn't say this, but for teams that watch and study us, it's one of our best maps right now if not our best map and we've been defeating good teams on it.

We beat NAVI, we defeated Heroic on it multiple times. It's one of our stronger maps, especially on the CT side. On T side we have a good game plan, it's a map we studied a lot throughout the year, it always gave us trouble so it's a map we always worked hard on and it seems to be paying off.

Going on to Dust2, it's one of the blank maps in our minds, on the CT side we're kind of getting it sometimes here and there, but T side we don't have too much of an idea to handle some aggressive plays. They played pretty standard overall but they have a strong Dust2 and played really well, I was locking down B at the start but kind of ran out of gas at the end there, it was tough to handle that.

On Inferno, I remember playing them a lot at the beginning of the year online. It was back-and-forth. We beat them, then they beat us, it was very back-and-forth, but we're pretty confident going into it. I'm sure they were confident going into it as well, I just think we had a good CT side. They won pistol and it was an 11-4 half, if we would have won pistols it could have been 14-1.

We played really well and got all the rounds we needed, I think Stewie and I are the best B holders in the world right now, we're really good and confident playing it. He's the guy that guides the B thing, he's the brains and I'm the guy that shoots.

That was what I wanted to touch on because Banana seemed to be the key there, something NAVI had a lot of trouble with. How did you deny them control?

Stewie is just really smart with the way he plays B, he has a really good idea on how to take it. Anytime he looks into teams he understands 'hey, we want to throw nades at the start and we'll wait until they waste their nades and throw nade backs to retake control.' It's more of a back-and-forth game, rotating our nades and our opponents' nades.

I just think Stewie has a good mind at B and it's the type of angles and the type of fights that I'm just competent at taking. Naturally Stewie and I are just very confident, it's in our blood to play B.

Boombl4 mentioned the importance of the clutch situations after the initial trades and the chaos subsided, 2vs2 situations and moments like that, which is kind of your thing. How did you guys get the edge in those tense moments?

At the end of the day I know that playing with Stewie and FalleN, they're very calm in late post-plant situations, similar to me. I know that when those rounds get tense you need to slow down because commonly teams will make the mistakes for you, especially when they're on the CT side. They'll be playing split on sides of the map thinking, 'OK, if I'm playing solo I have to kill three to get away with it' and they just can't do that.

When it comes to those moments we're all very calm and we just know that we need to play slow, hold angles, watch what we need to watch, coordinate a plan and go in together and use that. Myself, as a clutch player in those positions, it's a big role in my team, to clutch out rounds.

I feel like I didn't really have too many here, I know I lost one or two, but I know Jake won one, FalleN won one, it was definitely a game in which we split the clutch rounds between NAVI and us, but definitely some rounds went our way. Who knows if we didn't win those? It could have been a 2-0 for NAVI, they could have won Overpass.

Talking about roles, I'd like to theorize for a second. We're in the silly season and a lot rumors say shox could be joining Liquid. If that happened, one comment I've heard repeated is that you and him could clash over roles. What are your thoughts on that?

I can't talk about roster stuff, but if we're talking about a hypothetical world, what people kind of forget is that shox and I are players that can adapt to any role. I remember when I started coming into the game, especially in the early days in OpTic in 2016, or even when I was in Conquest and all of that, I was an entry-fragger running in first and trying to get kills.

Later on in OpTic I was trying to learn how to lurk, and there were times in Liquid when I had to pick up the AWP and become the main AWPer on CT sides. At the end of the day, with a player like myself, and shox... he's a player I looked up to all of the time when I was a kid and even playing in CS:GO. I always wanted to be that player that's all-around and can do anything.

I don't want someone to sit here and tell me 'oh, you can only play one role.' I know there's players out there, and I think I'm one of those players, that can achieve and do anything in any role. I just have to find my way within the team and what's comfortable for them and then I'll find my comfort zones and what I need to do.

This victory against NAVI must give you some renewed confidence. From what I understand you came here without practicing much, so what has this win done for your confidence?

We came into the tournament with the team's current state, knowing it won't be the same team next year, that we'll have different players, so we didn't practice much after Sweden because people had to go back home and all of that. But NAVI, out of all the teams, are the best team in the world, so that has definitely slingshotted our momentum and our confidence all the way to the top.

We're like 'Who knows? Maybe we could go all the way and win it.' It would be amazing because it's our last event and I'd love to win a trophy, for everyone, but especially Grim because he's never won one. It would be amazing if we could achieve something like that, but right now we're just going with the flow and hoping for the best.

We're all trying our hardest, we're not trying to slack around. Understand that yeah, our practice has been limited, but when we show up we play and we play to win.