After the summer player break ends on Aug. 15, Team Liquid’s CS:GO squad will be led by Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo, his teammate Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski announced during his latest stream.
EliGE added “Stewie was IGLing in Cologne, but I think we’ll do FalleN IGL when we go back after the player break,”
The Brazilian AWPer has previously served as the captain of Luminosity Gaming, SK Gaming, and MIBR in his professional career. He joined Liquid in January and has already led them in-game at least once, most recently at IEM Katowice in February, following Liquid’s disappointing performance in the BLAST Premier Spring Groups.
FalleN and Stewie2K have very different tendencies when it comes to in-game leadership, thus the back-and-forth shifting of the captain role implies that Liquid isn’t sure how they want to approach the game.
The Brazilian was formerly regarded as one of the best CS:GO captains, particularly during his time with Luminosity and SK, where he led the team to back-to-back Major titles. But, since the ESL Pro League Season Six Finals in December 2017, he hasn’t won a major championship.
The player break could assist Liquid, especially because head coach Eric “adreN” Hoag, who took over for Jason “moses” O’Toole in early May, will have some time away from official matches to go over a number of Liquid’s demos and identify any faults on the roster.
For the time being, it’s unknown whether FalleN will be Liquid’s permanent captain or if they’ll merely play under him for a few tournaments following the player break next month.