Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo will be the new captain of Team Liquid’s CS:GO squad after the summer player break is over on Aug. 15, his teammate Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski confirmed during his latest stream.
“Stewie was IGLing at Cologne, but I think when we go back after the player break we’re going to do FalleN IGL,” EliGE said.
The Brazilian AWPer spent previous years in his career as the captain of Luminosity Gaming, SK Gaming, and MIBR. He joined Liquid in January and has already in-game led them at least once at IEM Katowice in February, right after Liquid’s poor run in the BLAST Premier Spring Groups.
The back-and-forth swapping of the captain role indicates that Liquid aren’t clear on how they want to approach the game since FalleN and Stewie2K have fairly different styles when it comes to in-game leading. The Brazilian was once regarded as one of the best captains in CS:GO, especially during his time on Luminosity and SK when he guided the team to back-to-back Major championships. But he hasn’t won a premier championship since the ESL Pro League Season Six Finals in December 2017.
Liquid could benefit from the player break, especially because head coach Eric “adreN” Hoag, who replaced Jason “moses” O’Toole in early May, will have some time away from official matches to go through a number of Liquid’s demos and identify any issues on the squad.
For now, it’s unclear if FalleN will be the definitive captain of Liquid or if they’ll just play under him for a couple of tournaments after the player break next month.
