Two of the great Cinderella stories of the CS:GO Majors are the Liquid runs at MLG Columbus 2016 and ESL Cologne 2016. The stories and drama surrounding the Liquid lineup before both events only added to the impact to what they accomplished in those two runs. At MLG Columbus the team made it to top four, at ESL Cologne, the team made it to the finals. In both runs, the two star players were Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev and Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski. They never played together again, but their paths have been in parallel and their goals the same. They are the chosen ones and one day their battle will decide championships.

The paths the two started on couldn’t be completely different. S1mple was already known to be an ascendant talent early on in his CS:GO career, but he had terrible attitude problems. He was too emotional and overall a bad teammate. It got to the point that he jumped around teams every 3 months or so. The longest stint he had on any team was FlipSid3 Tactics for eight months in 2015. During that time, Flipsid3 Tactics went to WESG 2015 and had to play with a standin. They got Spencer “Hiko” Martin and this eventually changed everything.

As for EliGE, he started his competitive career in Starcraft 2 first. He cut his teeth on the competitive 1v1 game and was a player who was trying to get into WCS NA. However, like many SC2 players he came to understand the power of the balance team.

“I played SC2 for a while for that time, but when I saw the CS:GO beta came out and I got a key I started playing it whenever I had the time, and I really enjoyed it. I started DMing more and more and when I failed to qualify for the second season of WCS, because they released a patch the night of the qualifier finals that completely changed the match-up I prepared for, I was completely done and ready to switch over to CS:GO.” – HLTV Interview

He was still young, inexperienced, and still in school when he switched over to playing CS:GO. However he showed enough potential that he along with Nicholas “nitr0” Cannella were picked up in Liquid’s initial squad. The two of them are the only surviving players from that time, though Keith “NAF” Markovic did rejoin nearly three years later.

The Liquid team slowly grew in strength and everything changed once Hiko joined the team near the end of 2015. Hiko is a player that is dedicated to winning and he was willing to do whatever it took to get there. This seemed to enact a lot of roster changes that have characterized Liquid for the last few years, even after Hiko left. The biggest move Hiko ever did was get s1mple on the team.

At the time, s1mple was the unchosen one. He was an incredible talent, but he was wasting away on a random stack with his friends known as Worst Players. It looked like it would be years before s1mple could get another shot to play high tier CS:GO because of his personality issues. However he had met the one man who could deal with them.

Hiko was that player and he was the one who got s1mple into Liquid. The two had a mutual respect for each other from their time playing together at ESWC 2015. Hiko was a player who was completely able to deal with s1mple’s strong personality and s1mple appreciated and respected Hiko.

However, even though Hiko could handle it, the others could not. It was an intense amount of turmoil as s1mple moved over to the NA Liquid house. He was young, emotional, and unprepared for how much his life would change. At the same time, the other Liquid players couldn’t deal with him and players shuffled in and out of the roster all of the time. There was Eric “adreN” Hoag, Kenneth “koosta” Suen, Jacob “Pimp” Winneche, and Joshua “jdm64” Marzano. Even the coaches switched from James “GBJames” O’Connor to Luis “peacemaker” Tadeu.

Those months of the Liquid roster sounded incredibly tense and each story that came out of it made it sound even wilder with coaches and players screaming at each other, an oppressive atmosphere that sucked the life out of everyone, people losing the roles that they wanted to play, and players losing respect for other teammates and cutting them.

However throughout all of that, the Liquid roster pulled the impossible. They made it to top four at the MLG Columbus Major and the finals of ESL Cologne 2016. The finals was a feat that no NA team had ever done in CS:GO history until Cloud 9’s historic win at ELeague Boston 2018. Both were done off of the back of incredible skill, primarily from s1mple and EliGE. It unveiled s1mple as a world beating prodigy and EliGE as a star player. It never happened again.

S1mple had already decided that he was on the way out of the team. He couldn’t handle living in NA anymore and the ESL Cologne 2016 Major was his last run with the team. At that tournament Liquid defeated Na`Vi in the quarterfinals and that was the moment where the CIS powerhouse realized that they needed s1mple. So they chose him and soon after s1mple joined Na`Vi.

The other part of the story we’d hear afterwards was that EliGE had given the team an ultimatum, either it was s1mple or him. From Liquid’s end they also made the choice and the one they chose was EliGE. S1mple was a superstar player, but EliGE was an incredible young talent himself. He had shown that he could play against the best in the world and they could build around him as an NA team whereas s1mple’s time on the team was likely on the click, even if they could convince him to stay with Liquid instead of Na`Vi (GBJames is almost certain they could have if Hiko had begged s1mple to stay.)

The two stars quickly met soon after the breakup at ESL New York 2016. They met in the semifinals of that tournament and it was an incredible match, but in the end Na`Vi came out the victors and went on to win the tournament. Despite that, the tournament showed incredible potential of the Liquid roster and the strength of the Na`Vi roster. In that one moment it felt like they were going to be battling for the top of the world.

It never happened as that hope shattered and the raw reality came in. The pure potential of the players was incredible, but both players still had serious personality problems that were never truly fixed. S1mple was still a hot asset, or as Ladislav “GuardiaN” Kovacs called “A wild beast.” As for EliGE, he had the opposite problem. He shut down mentally and was passive in dealing with his issues. He bottled them up, but because of that, when they finally came out, it was already past the point of no return. He acknowledged this as a weakness himself, “I think that the internal conflicts from past iterations of the team were still there, especially with me, and it was holding us back.”

As both players tried to improve in their teams, both walked similar paths. S1mple grew stronger and stronger until he became the best player in the world, but he still couldn’t win championships. One of the big factors was because the valve coaching rule came and essentially removed Sergey “starix” Ischuk from the server. The team tried to fill the hole with Denis “seized” Kostin, but it never worked and instead ruined his game as well. The personality clashes were too much and eventually GuardiaN left the roster entirely.

At the same time, EliGE was faced with similar issues. The lineup with Pimp and JDM64 didn’t work out. The same issues seemed to crop up. The team continued to shuffle rosters, getting Russel “Twistzz” Van Dulken and Peter “stanislaw” Jarguz into the team. It worked for a time, but stanislaw’s ideas clashed with Wilton “zews” Prado and he was in turn removed from the team. During all of this EliGE became the best player in NA proving that at least individually, he was the chosen one.

However both players had the same problems. Their personalities were getting in the way of the results they wanted as individuals and as a team. Both s1mple and EliGE had to face that problem. Both eventually did. Part of it came from better in-game leaders. Danylo “Zeus” Teslenko for s1mple and nitr0 for EliGE. Part of it came from their own growth. Since the new lineup has formed, we haven’t heard anything bad come from either the Na`Vi or Liquid camps about either star. Part of it came from more confidence in their rosters. Na`Vi picked up Denis “electronic” Sharipov and Liquid got NAF.

Both players were even in talks of huge roster moves in the last year. S1mple was close to joining SK, EliGE was about to join Cloud 9. Neither deal worked out and s1mple has continued to be a superstar player in SK. EliGE is still one of the star players of Liquid and sounds more dedicated as an individual and team member than he ever was before.

Now nearly two years since their historic runs together, both stars have arrived at a similar point in World CS:GO. Na`Vi are once again the best CIS team. Liquid are finally the best NA team. Now these ex-teammates turned rivals faced off once again in a semifinals of a huge LAN tournament, the last time they did so was at ESL New York nearly two years ago.

At ESL Proleague Season 7 Dallas, the two teams first played on Dust 2. A map where s1mple, nitr0 and EliGE all played together once to upset Fnatic in their run at MLG Columbus. It was an incredibly close match, but Liquid were able to grind it out in the end and take it. The second map was domination, particularly by EliGE on the Ct-side. In this encounter, it was Liquid who won out and EliGE had delivered on his own implicit promise. Liquid chose him and he in turn delivered for them.

This is only the first of what looks to be many battles between the two stars. Both have been stars of teams with internal struggles and conflicts. Both are now playing for the semifinals and finals spots in international LANs. I think back on the pure potential that the two of them had when they played together, but now we are finally seeing that they have been able to reach that potential separately. Both teams are now two of the best teams in the world and have built their rosters around their chosen ones. Na`Vi for s1mple, Liquid for EliGE. Though their time together was brief, it has shaped and defined their careers in ways that mirror each other. Both had incredible talent, both had personality issues that hampered them from harnessing that in a team environment. Both have gotten over those hurdles. Both are the chosen ones of their teams and this is their battle. Na`Vi vs Liquid, s1mple vs EliGE.

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