A 0.87 Rating and Three Blank Majors: Inside Team Liquid's Failed IGL Project

On July 20, 2026, Team Liquid moved Kamil "siuhy" Szkaradek off its active roster and into free agency. The report came from Dust2.us. But the real story is not in that announcement. It is in the 0.87 figure.

In the summer of 2026, I sat down to re-cut every map Team Liquid played across its three most recent Majors, flagging each mid-round engagement and noting the exact moments the team shifted tempo. I was not looking for highlight clutches. I was looking for something else: the rhythm of decision-making.

The result made me stop mid-way. On the maps Liquid lost at the biggest events, the team executed on average roughly two fewer mid-round tactical adjustments per map than its opponents. Two. At tier-one level, that is the gap between a team that knows exactly what it is doing and a team waiting for something to happen.

To understand why the 0.87 figure carries that much weight, it has to be placed in the right frame.

siuhy is a Polish player who had earned a strong reputation in the jersey of MOUZ, one of Europe's leading organizations. In April 2026 he joined Team Liquid on loan. It was a trial arrangement: Liquid needed a caller, MOUZ needed room for other talent, and neither side wanted a long-term commitment.

Liquid is not an unambitious team. For years it has been the flagship of North American Counter-Strike. But before siuhy arrived, the team had cycled through two other leadership eras: Casper "cadiaN" Møller and Russel "Twistzz" Van Dulken. Neither left a lasting mark. When siuhy took the role, he was the third name in a leadership carousel stretching across multiple seasons.

That is the starting point any data analysis must concede. You cannot judge an In-Game Leader without placing him inside the system around him. And the system at Liquid, at that moment, was cracked.

In July 2026, Liquid pushed Johnny "JT" Theodosiou into the calling role and moved siuhy out. The sequence matters: this was an internal reaction, not the product of a planned IGL search. The team benched siuhy and handed the role to an in-house successor. No blockbuster signing was announced.

According to HLTV data, siuhy closed his Liquid spell with a 0.87 rating across 185 maps. For any tier-one player, a rating below 0.90 is a warning sign. For an IGL, the number has to be read more carefully.

The calling role in modern CS2 carries a structural rating discount. The shot-caller often sacrifices individual output to serve the system: more utility usage, entry duties for teammates, accepting unfavourable duels to open space. A 0.95 rating for an IGL can therefore represent good play, while 0.90 may be merely average.

But 0.87 is different. It sits at the lower edge of what tier-one teams tolerate from a caller. And the more telling detail is the sample: 185 maps. That sample size rules out the possibility of a short-term form dip. This is a trend confirmed over a long period.

If the only issue were a low rating, the story would be simple: a player who did not measure up. But the larger picture lies in the collective record.

Across 16 months under siuhy, Team Liquid did not reach the playoffs of a single Major. Three Majors, not once. The team's best result was a top-four finish at FISSURE Playground #2, a third-party mid-tier event. At the most important CS2 events, the team went 5-11.

Pause on the 5-11 record. A team can lose a few games to bad luck, a brutal schedule, or one clutch that did not land. But losing nearly twice as often at the biggest events, sustained across multiple tournaments, outlines a systemic pattern. It shows a team unable to convert potential into results under maximum pressure.

The Major format amplifies the problem. The Major group stage runs a Swiss format, mostly BO1, meaning single-map series. BO1 inflates variance: a team can lose simply because one map did not go its way. But failing to reach the playoffs across three separate Majors cannot be blamed on BO1 variance. It reflects something deeper: the team could not peak in long-format, high-pressure series.

And here is the point I want to stress. Liquid's problem was not a weak player, but a system that was never defined — three leadership eras, three different philosophies, and not one that reached the organization's ceiling of expectation.

My local club taught me to read the game before reading the stat sheet. I learned that in 2026, watching Hebei China Fortune complete 567 passes yet lose 0-1. The numbers said the team controlled the match. The eye on the pitch said the team was going nowhere. Both were right, and both were incomplete.

In siuhy's case, one data point forces caution before any conclusion. Dust2.us, in its original report, described Liquid as having "several strong pieces around siuhy." That is a mild defence of the Polish player. If a team holds several quality individuals and still fails, responsibility cannot fall entirely on one man.

I built my first xG model by hand at the 2026 World Cup; now I build with discipline. And data discipline taught me one thing: correlation is not causation. The 0.87 rating correlates with Liquid's failure, but it does not prove siuhy was the sole cause. He may be the product of a broken system, rather than the man who broke it.

Think it through: an IGL is responsible for the structure of a match, not for every individual shot. If teammates fail to win the duels he creates, the stat sheet records the caller's name. This is the paradox of the role: the organizer is judged by other people's results.

But I also do not want to fall into the reverse trap — defending a player simply because he has a good CV. 185 maps is a large sample. Three Majors is a long span. When a project runs 16 months without a meaningful result, then whether the cause is individual or systemic, stopping is reasonable.

The 2026 silence was not an abyss; it was where old data began to tell its story. I learned that when global football halted. Old denominators broke apart, and early signals of the future surfaced. In Liquid's case, the silence is 16 months without a Major playoff. And the story it tells is clear: a repeating pattern, not an isolated incident.

There is one aspect barely discussed in this news item: siuhy's nationality. Liquid is a North American organization. siuhy is Polish. A flagship North American team importing an IGL from Europe — and still failing — is a systemic signal. It shows North America cannot supply tier-one callers from within.

The wider context reinforces this. In the same period, 100 Thieves was rebuilding its CS roster. And s1mple, one of the greatest players in history, moved to BC.Game. These moves are not isolated; they are a roster-restructuring wave sweeping across organizations.

In Europe, the development pipeline produces IGLs continuously. In North America, teams have to borrow. When you import the most important role on the team from outside, you depend on a supply chain you do not control.

From a financial angle, the deal has its own logic. siuhy arrived on loan and left as a free agent. Liquid recouped no transfer fee. This is a low-commitment, low-return structure: a failed rental, not an investment realized.

On pure cost terms, releasing an underperforming salaried player is a cash-flow positive. But it does not solve the larger problem: the calling slot remains vacant. And every day it stays open, the risk grows that Liquid enters the next event with an improvised lineup.

In a transfer window, noise drowns out signal. People debate who replaces whom, which team is stronger. But the real question is structural: is Liquid building a system, or just filling a hole?

What I will watch in the next cycle is not siuhy's destination, but Liquid's next decision. If the organization signs a proven IGL, the story gets rewritten as an upgrade. If JT keeps the role by default, that is the least-bad option in a situation with no good choices.

As for siuhy, his market has just been repriced. An IGL with a 0.87 rating and three blank Majors is a hard asset to sell. But the European market may see what the North American stat sheet hides: a system-builder, not a fragger. If that is right, then Liquid let go of something it never truly understood.