EDG begins charge for successive global titles, TL lost “due to mistakes”

Master Bangkok started with a ridiculous 17-15 opening map win for EDward Gaming in their series against Team Liquid. The Champions holders took the momentum to claim a more dominant map two win and secure the overall series victory. 

EDward Gaming shows why they’re Champions winners

For EDG, victory means that they now need just one more win to move on to the Playoffs portion of the tournament while. CHICHOO’s admiration for TL’s nAts was well publicised before the match and perhaps that gave the EDG man added desire to perform in the series. And perform he did, claiming 54 kills across the two maps and earning an impressive 266 combat score – the highest between the two teams.

Speaking to the media following the win, superstar duelist ZmjjKK pointed to the team’s determination that allowed them to clinch the extremely close opening map before taking full control of the series.

“No matter your performance, your form or your reading, I think you need to be risky. You need to dare to do something in the game, but also you need to focus on your detail”

Head coach Muggle was asked his views on the difference in performance between the two sides on the day. Muggle pointed to a better reading on Pearl that made the difference, adding that the “wonderful” nailbiter opening map “can also show that the CN league is at a much higher level than before”.

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Team Liquid needs another mid-tournament ramp-up

While being on the receiving end of a 2-0 loss is never ideal, Team Liquid can at least take some solace in the close nature of the opener on Split, especially in the context of facing the current world champions. Liquid’s EMEA Kickoff run didn’t start off that great either, with the side ramping up throughout the tournament. But they will not be allowed to saunter their way through the opening stages of a competition with the level of opponents in such a global event and now must find immediate improvement to avoid an early ticket home.

Team Liquid members were coy when it came to dissecting the loss immediately following its conclusion, with head coach LohaN requesting “distance” after the game before commenting on specific things learned in the series.

“I think we need to distance ourselves from the game to have an actual concrete answer to that. Obviously losing like this, it’s always hard, but yeah, we need to distance ourselves from today’s game and maybe see from another perspective and understand exactly what went wrong.”

Lohan was later asked for more specific thoughts on the difference between the two maps and why, in his opinion, there was such a stark difference in performance.

“I think we were expecting to win the first map, our map pick. We know that Pearl specifically is a map that we are working on. It felt that we pretty much lost due to mistakes that we did, not because the other team played better. I think it affected our confidence going to the next map a lot.

“We tried, so what matters the most [is] you just review what happened in this game and learn from it and do better next time.”

The loss itself sadly took attention away from Keiko’s wholesome global debut in front of a number of family members. With Thai relatives on his mother’s side of the family, TL’s qualification to Bangkok was understandably more personal for the former Apeks player.

“For me, I was super excited to come play on the stage. There was my family in the crowd, so I was looking at them every time I did well. They were cheering for me a lot so that gave me a lot of motivation. But yeah, it was really fun.”

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