​ Ahead of the semifinals of the ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier, members of Team Liquid spoke on a conference call with assembled media members. Here are highlights of the 20-minute roundtable.





Russell “Twistzz” Van Dulken on Made in Brazil: MIBR looks kinda like a mess right now, that’s to be expected after picking up a new player, and their way of practicing seems kind of flawed in saying that they are purposefully going to events for practice, and that’s not really smart in my eyes.





Epitacio “TACO” de Melo on Natus Vincere: Our mentality for the game against Navi is really good. First, we are happy we are in the semifinals and second because we have no pressure. They are the favorites, we are not. They just won Cologne and have to prove they can keep tournaments. I don’t think we have something to prove...We are feeling really confident because we beat them the first time we played them.





Twistzz on Jake “Stewie2k” Yip and Tarik “tarik” Celik: I feel like Stewie’s and Tarik’s play styles have changed in a pretty negative way...They seem lost because they are forced to play passive and in an actual system, whereas in Cloud9 I don’t even think they had a system, if they followed it. I think they really damaged their individual play style joining this team [MIBR].





TACO on Luminosity/SK Gaming’s Dominant Run: CS was our life. We would live to play CS, we would travel to play CS, we would do everything and anything to play CS. We were a really hardcore team. We also had really good players – a really good in-game leader, the best player in the world, I was a really good support player as well...Everything meshed and we were really happy playing CS. Now, I think the competition is getting harder. I feel like teams are getting more money to invest. We have professionals behind us to help us just focus on the game. Every top team now all have really good support from their organization.





Twistzz on Astralis: I feel like when we get real practice in, they won’t be an [obstacle] . Even at this event, when we play them – I think we are going to play them in the Grand Final – I think it’s not going to be as difficult as the group stage match.





Twistzz on his hair: Everyone keeps talking about my hair, I’m just trying to play CS. I want CS compliments. It sucks. I look in my Twitter feed and it’s all hair comments, like are they even watching the match? It’s super funny to me. I’m just playing CS, I don’t care what I look like on the stage.





Photo courtesy of Turner Sports/ELEAGUE