Was FalleN to Liquid decided in July?
Revisiting the Nitr0 drop decision and hammering out the timeline (and why the timeline matters.)
Team Liquid comes out of a crazy player break with things looking up.
I made the mistake of entering the player break taking a bit of a break, myself, from posting. Then, of course, so much happened that the idea of writing a blog about each thing seemed to become more and more insurmountable. A round-up on NA CS:GO news, in general, and NA #2 Evil Geniuses will come this weekend, but for now, let’s look at the Liquid move and the new-look roster securing a top 4 finish (at least) at Blast Premier among the world’s best.
Team Liquid drop Twistzz, add FalleN
If you logged off the CS:GOnet entirely after Liquid got, frankly, embarrassed 0-3 by a far better World #1 Astralis team at IEM Global Challenge to end the year, you missed Twistzz announcing in a post-match interview that his contract with Liquid was up.
Not long after, Brazilian legend and free agent AWP and IGL, FalleN, was linked with a move to Liquid.
On almost every level, this move to add FalleN was a no-brainer—since losing Nitr0 after reaching World #1 with him, Liquid looked like they were in desperate need of a dedicated AWPer and another player with deep strategic game sense who could take some pressure off of Stewie2K on both of those counts. On a rare stream, Stewie spoke to the addition and basically confirmed this narrative:
It doesn’t hurt that FalleN has previously played and is friends with Stewie2K, or that he brings with him a massive, ravenous Brazilian fanbase and 1M twitter followers to the Liquid brand.
CS:GO commentator Richard Lewis predicted all this after posting a video December 18 that Twistzz was holding Liquid back, so cue him being just generally insufferable. (With all due respect.) Ah, yes, here it is: the obligatory Richard Lewis I-Told-You-So video.
Of course, in hindsight, the writing was probably on the wall for Twistzz, if not explicitly planned, when Liquid picked up Grim from Triumph, especially after he quickly proved himself on the European stage. Grim was pure, cold-blooded talent, like Twistzz, albeit with less top-tier experience.
Of course, on Liquid, Twistzz played in a role that didn’t really put a premium on tactical experience, and the team really didn’t need them both. Contractually, it probably just made sense to run out the clock on the young Canadian, which might be the whole story if Liquid was simply reacting to developments through a crazy year hampered by the pandemic.
But it does make you wonder—was Grim added to replace Twistzz all along?
Revising history—when was FalleN to Liquid decided?
Something doesn’t sit quite right with me—the narrative from Stewie, above, makes perfect sense. But it runs counter to what he said after the decision to drop adreN as coach in favor of Moses shortly after the July player break.
"I think one of the main reasons we picked up moses was just because adreN, for us, was a more strategic coach, and we felt like we didn't really need a strategic coach,” Stewie said in a post-match interview in August, as reported by HLTV. "We needed someone to not be afraid to point people out, make sure they are accountable for their actions, kinda be the bad guy on the team."
Maybe a “strategic coach” was superfluous on a roster with nitr0 and Stewie, but watching Liquid in the second half of 2020, especially in losing so decisively to a well-drilled Astralis at the end of the year, it seemed like a strategic coach was exactly what they needed.
Sure, Liquid was facing an uphill battle, regardless, in a world without LANs, but they had plenty of time in Europe between events to prepare for that last one, and they still got handily embarrassed by Astralis after the Danes’ IGL Gla1ve straight up insulted them in an on-stream interview ahead of the finals.
That’s right—Gla1ve said they’d much prefer to face Liquid over BIG in the finals because “they aren’t maybe preparing as much as BIG are, or not having the same kind of strats.” You can see that interview clipped on Facebook. Astralis walked over Liquid in the finals match-up, adding… injury to insult.
I mean, that’s downright embarrassing for the team and the organization—unless you can chalk it up to Team Liquid basically being in a holding pattern for the entire second half of 2020 and choosing not to build strategies around a temporary roster with FalleN coming in and Twistzz on the way out.
To a fan or anyone interested in the business or managing a roster, I think the timeline very much matters—the Moses and Grim additions don’t look like smart moves unless a move for FalleN was planned all along.
When Nitr0 was benched and dropped due to a big performance drop-off, Twistzz was also not performing well and the decision to not renew his contract was maybe made then, after adding Grim. And despite being occasionally brilliant, Twistzz was pretty inconsistent throughout the second half of 2020. Playing with 70 ping from Canada certainly didn’t help, but the inconsistency continued upon arrival in Europe, with him completely gone from server in a big match versus NAVI.
Maybe a move away from MIBR was also planned by FalleN around August, which could explain some of the weirdness, there, around the same time, with the organization unilaterally benching Taco and Fer, with FalleN reportedly “stepping down” as a result. It certainly matters to MIBR’s narrative and their fans whether FalleN’s decision to leave came before or after the organization’s.
It also matters to understanding team dynamics on Liquid—is Stewie making the roster decisions as conjectured by win.gg back in July? Was his comment about a new coach making teammates “accountable for their actions” an indication that it was him behind the organization’s decisions to drop nitr0 and Twistzz? The Stewie-FalleN connection seems to add another data point in favor of this view.
Aside: Are headshots inherently inconsistent? Twistzz linked with move to FaZe.
This is even wilder conjecture—and an open question to CS:GO players. I wonder if Twistzz’s inconsistency has anything to do with his propensity towards headshots—a sort-of all-or-nothing approach leading to all-or-nothing results.
It was striking, to me, when HLTV released a graphic on Twitter showing Twistzz with a headshot percentage at least ten points higher than the next players with headshots per round (HPR) above 0.40:
In fact, another graphic from November showed Twistzz with a much higher headshot percentage, in general—with only Heroic’s b0RUP also averaging over 60%:
Based on this scatter plot, I doubt there’s a strong correlation between headshot percentage and a player’s rating—but I wonder if a higher headshot percentage would correlate with a much higher variance in rating from match to match? I’ll look into that for a later post.
Anyway, now, Twistzz has been linked with a move to FaZe clan, which also makes perfect sense. FaZe is an all-world all-star super team (and social media brand) that puts a premium on raw talent but hasn’t been able to put it together, strategically, since Karrigan left. But who cares—they’re more of a sweatshirt brand, anyway, and they’ve signed themselves a talented male model with fantastic hair. Congratulations, Twistzz—keep on popping heads and making cash money.
Liquid’s new-look looks good at Blast Premier.
Of course, everyone else is talking about it—so I won’t dig too deep into it, here—but Liquid are looking pretty damn good with FalleN in this first big event of the year, with a $1M prize pool at stake, despite apparently not having much time to integrate him into their system.
Liquid have secured a lower finals rematch against NAVI who they beat, handily, 2-0 on Wednesday, making up for a massively disappointing 0-2 loss in their last meeting. Their only tournament loss came 0-2 to a well-deserving World #2 Vitality, which really should’ve gone at least three maps—Vitality’s ApEX noted on Twitter that Liquid were “really good with so little practices.”
With regards to insight into Liquid’s system with FalleN added, player comments and interviews seem to confirm that Stewie is still officially in-game leader, but FalleN is helping in an AWP role with great game sense and mid-round calls when he’s in the right position to make them.
It should also be noted that NAF is staying away from the AWP, completely, this tournament, and also playing really, really damn good, with an average rating of 1.33 over six maps and a dominant performance versus Evil Geniuses, today.
Maybe he’s a little fired up about being left out of the HLTV top 20 after landing #6 and #7 in 2018 and 2019, respectively?
