YEKINDAR: "I respect NiKo a lot and I watch a lot of his demos at the moment"

HLTV.org caught up with the Latvian entry-fragger after Liquid recorded their first victory of IEM Katowice.

Liquid kicked off the new year in relatively weak form. The squad immediately showed signs of rust, picking up just one win over their countrymen of Complexity in an otherwise disappointing 10-12th place run through the BLAST Premier Spring Groups.

The North American lineup continued to look shaky in their opening game of IEM Katowice, surviving a tough first match versus an IHC who has been a dark horse in the event thus far after notably eliminating FURIA in the Play-In.

HLTV.org spoke to Mareks "⁠YEKINDAR⁠" Gaļinskis shortly after Liquid's opening win at the $1,000,000 tournament. The Latvian rifler shed some light on the team's practice and preparation ahead of the new season, how he feels about the upcoming match versus Natus Vincere, and his thoughts on narrowly missing out on HLTV's Opener of the Year award to Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač.

Just going back to BLAST, it was clear from all the interviews you did that you weren't the best-prepared going into it. Can you talk me through the thinking behind how you started off the year in terms of preparation and how it ramped up for you leading into Katowice?

We obviously understood that we needed a longer break. Everybody felt a little more tired than usual and vacation dates happened to be so that the start of January, for some people it only started. We started kinda late, if I'm not mistaken we started playing on the 12th, and 16th or 17th we were already traveling for BLAST, so we didn't have much time to... first of all, you need to remember things, and then, second of all, we were adding things. We were adding the seventh map, Nuke, we were testing out Nuke because we understood that we're not gonna have the opportunity to test these things later on in the year. Now it was BLAST Groups going into Kato, you have a lot of time to prepare and fix your mistakes and fix your map pool, add new things and whatever.

We just understood that we have to take the hit in that specific moment. We understood that we will play worse. I haven't played the map for four years or like three years, they haven't played the map for two years. Other than that, we were just updating our game on all the maps and we're trying to overcome our previous level and become better. The main problems I believe were that we were kinda still sleepy, because we just didn't practice and remember everything yet that we did, but also we were focusing on new things too much. Then old things you're starting to forget and that's why you're making mistakes, and then you have to talk about it again. Now we came into Kato with, I guess not a bad form, but even in this game it showed that we still have a lot to work around.

IHC eliminated FURIA, that was a big shock to everybody. I imagine that rang the alarm bells for you guys that you can't really underestimate them, so can you tell me about what your expectations were and how much you prepared for it?

Mostly when they beat FURIA, we thought to ourselves, 'yeah, wow, they beat FURIA,' something unexpected, right. When we watched their game, we understood that they're actually playing good. The only thing that they lack is diversity. They have a couple of things on CT side and T side that they do all the time, and as soon as you understand it and you see that there are these patterns, they're not really playing diverse anymore. It's understandable, they're quite a young team and maybe not so experienced and they're not playing on this level all the time. We just understood what we needed to do to win, we understood that we just have more instruments and, if we just are focused enough, we're gonna play good.

At the start of Inferno, they started really good, they were hitting really good calls, but at the same time we were doing some really silly mistakes. I'm really glad that everybody showed up in the server and we had some really good individual plays, which I haven't seen for a while, and that is a really good sign.

You had kind of slow start into the map as well, but then later on you picked up and got some key openings, working around banana as usual. Was there something from you that you noticed you needed to adjust?

I would say that mostly I'm sick, I have a fever.

Again?

Again, yeah (laughs). And it's hard for me to focus, in a way, but I'm trying my best and I'm trying to call a bit more and help my team. The main problem was not necessarily that I wasn't killing anyone, the main problem was that we were doing the wrong things at the wrong time at the start of the CT side. When we started winning rounds because we were doing the right things, that's when the kills come and then you just come back into the game with no problem. I saw how they played banana on CT side and I was just playing off that, basically.

Tell me about NAVI as the next matchup. It's been successful for you, dating back to Rio you won the last couple of series and a best-of-one match, are you happy about heading up against them this time after seeing their form recently?

NAVI are probably one of the easiest teams in this group. I would consider FaZe and G2 are the top teams in this group and the top opponents, and I was honestly expecting NAVI to win against Cloud9. I think Cloud9 need a bit more time and NAVI had more time to actually adjust and add everything. I think they're on the right path and not really certain on how well they are prepared and how well they're playing, and how many instruments they have, but they're definitely playing better than they used to play at the end of last year. We're never underestimating them, but it's pretty comfortable to play against them.

You missed out on the opener of the year award just barely. What are your thoughts on that?

I thought to myself, 'NiKo, damn...' But then I understood he actually deserves it. I checked some stats, and he's in the top 20 for like seven years in a row and he had really high placings. I respect him a lot in terms of how he plays and I watch a lot of his demos at the moment because G2 are playing insane and specifically NiKo. I totally understand why he won and not a problem against the judges (laughs).

Do you think that you belong in the same category of players?

I think personally yes, it's a good comparison. I feel like NiKo's main roles are rotation players on CT side, where you gain the most information and the first contact duels. And on T side, where usually taking the round, taking control of the map, so we have a lot of similar positions. Maybe the difference is that in executes I'm maybe running in, but in G2 it's HooXi most of the times, so that's the only difference. But I would say yeah, it's a good comparison.