By Taras Bortnik

Special to VPEsports

Eric “adreN” Hoag took time to chat with VPEsports following his team’s elimination from ESL Pro League Season 10. fnatic eliminated the North Americans in the quarterfinals.

Team Liquid’s coach talked about the teams slump, what he’s focusing on, a hectic travel schedule, and his team of the decade. You can read the full and exclusive interview below.

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VPEsports: At what point did you start to feel the team was losing their morale?

adreN: I think one of the demoralizing things for us, is that our Overpass has been so bad. I mean against fnatic, we really liked Inferno and Mirage in that best-of-three. And we just beat fnatic five days ago in the semifinals of ECS so we definitely thought we could win that match against fnatic, it justs demoralizing to lose Overpass again.

I think we have seven losses out of nine in recent times and Overpass used to be our best map over the Summer. It was our map pick, our home pick. So for us to lose that again and again, it’s like man, come on that sucks.

Going into Inferno, we just made a couple of basic mistakes. We made a lot of basic mistakes even before this fnatic match at Pro League. We always thought we were in it because we just beat them last week.

VPEsports: What lessons do you think fnatic took from that recent match that they did differently this time?

adreN: They probably just reviewed the matches because it was the same three maps as ECS. I think against us on Overpass, they went like really slow and pressuring our B site. I think they were trying to catch us off guard and wait for our aggression this time on Overpass.

Then on Inferno, we really didn’t get to play T side at all because we just stomped them on our CT side the last best-of-three, so I don’t know if there was really too much of an adjustment from them there. But I mean obviously it’s always easier to play a team twice, right?

VPEsports: When we spoke in an interview after Cologne, you spoke very confidently about your team not going downhill. And to be honest, it didn’t go that way as we saw the performance drop off. So what went wrong?

adreN: I still think we’re like right there at the top, I still think we’re a top-three team for sure. We have the same players that we had really good success with so I think we have the five individual players, we just need to get all on the same page again.

I feel like this event we just made so many basic mistakes, basic Counter-Strike mistakes that we shouldn’t be making. In clutch situations, someone is peeking when they shouldn’t be, and everyone knows it’s a mistake. I don’t even have to bring it up, they know it’s a mistake. It’s just basic stuff that can’t happen in a big match because fnatic’s gonna capitalize on it, right?

Other basic stuff is us not using out utility right when entering a bomb site. Everyone knows what utility should be thrown. For example, if we’re executing banana on Inferno, we like to have specific things before we entry and we were just missing all of those important nades that are supposed to be there, and we know they’re supposed to be there. So when stuff happens like that, you’re not gonna win a match if you’re not doing the basics.

VPEsports: Speaking of another NA team, Evil Geniuses’ match yesterday was somewhat of a disaster. From your perspective, how did that happen?

adreN: I didn’t actually watch that best-of-three at all. I was at a steak house enjoying some nice steak so no, didn’t watch that series.

I think for the EG guys, they have such a high ceiling, but then such a low low. I think they have such a low low right now because they’re just exhausted. I think they’re traveling too much. Their schedule has been even more insane than us.

It’s definitely taking a toll on their performances, no doubt. They’ve been to China twice in November. They’re just traveling everywhere, they’re playing way too much. Don’t have enough time to relax and regroup.

VPEsports: It seems to be a common mistake of teams that break into the top spots…

adreN: We did the same thing, we did exactly the same thing. During the Summer we were going to so many events because we were winning. Everything’s feeling good, so you’re like “do you wanna go to that event?” “hell yeah we do!”

VPEsports: Then in August you felt something was wrong?

adreN: Then I was like man, we need to slow down and just put the brakes on a reset. I think they’re going through that right now.

VPEsports: Maybe there’s a limit on how stacked your schedule is within a couple of months before you’re just going to go downhill?



adreN: It’s really tough because this year we really tried to not attend many events but it didn’t happen. Literally when I joined this team we said hey we’re not going to attend that many events this year. We attended more than they did last year.



For example, this run we’re at right now..we can’t skip EPL, we can’t skip ECS, we can’t skip the BLAST finals and those are all back-to-back-to-back. No team ever wants to miss any of those events. They’re the three biggest for us.

If it’s a big event, you can’t skip it. Sometimes it sucks that they’re all back-to-back but next year hopefully we’re gonna only play a select few tournaments.

VPEsports: We’re now here at the end of the year and it seems Astralis have gained the advantage in the second half of the year. Obviously they won a Major but then they moved a little back down. That left you guys still in a pretty good spot…



adreN: Yeah, Astralis was dipping just a little bit in the middle of the year and not attending that many events. They kind of took a bit of a break.

VPEsports: Do you think you benefited at all from Astralis skipping some events?



adreN: I mean, they were at all the events that we did win. Like Cologne, they got knocked out by Vitality, we just happened to not meet them. If we would have met, who knows what would have happened, maybe we wouldn’t have won Cologne. Who knows, you can only play whoever is in front of you.

Pro League last year we beat them in the quarters. I guess it was lucky for some events that they weren’t there because I think they are really a hard matchup for us, more than any other team for sure.

VPEsports: Speaking of your own performance this year, it was debut as a coach. 2019 was pretty successful for you, but how would you summarize what you could do better?



adreN: There’s always so much to learn. I’m still trying to learn right now, how I can help the team be motivated. Kind of like outside CS stuff is what I’m trying to work on. Being a coach, you’re dealing with five different players who have five different personalities and we need to make sure the team is meshing together and that there’s team chemistry.

Keeping the team motivated that I’m trying to figure out. After you win so many events, there’s a little bit of a lax feel within the team and you have to kick it back up a bit.

VPEsports: You became coach in January and now we’re here in December…is there anything you would have done in January that you wouldn’t do here now in December?

adreN: I don’t think there’s anything drastic, honestly. There’s nothing major I would have changed from the start to the finish to be honest.

VPEsports: Now you have BLAST ahead of you. How hard is it for your team to recover with all these events?

adreN: I think we just have to push through this last week. We’re practicing today, we’re not taking any time off. We only have like three days of practice here before we fly to Bahrain. We’re going to practice every day, we have scrims right after this press meeting.

We’re going to review, push through, we have one last week and then we get a break. That’s the motivation I think, we have one more tournament, let’s fucking go.

VPEsports: It’s the end of the decade and you are one of the old guard players in NA. Can you name your five prime players of the decade?

adreN: There’s so many. You probably have to go with f0rest, he’s a god and still performing. Throw a NEO in there because he’s a legend. For Sniper..I’m going with fRoD. Maybe he’s out of the decade. If I had to pick a CS:GO AWPer…I don’t know. Let’s go f0rest, NEO, GeT_RiGhT…Skadoodle on the AWP. One more player…I don’t have a fifth, we’re recruiting (laughs).

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