Team Liquid's BuLba: "We are confident no matter what the public says"

This article was originally published on GameSpot's sister site onGamers.com, which was dedicated to esports coverage.

Yesterday The International 2014 qualifiers kicked off with North America's best teams vying for a highly-coveted spot in Seattle. Fan favorites Team Liquid, spurred by the signing of Jimmy 'DeMoN' Ho in April, finished the day 4-1 with a late loss to the North American Rejects (NAR).

"Throughout the first four games I felt like we have been rejuvenated. We were making all the right decisions at the right times, but when it came to our game against NAR, our recent results haunted us," Team Liquid team manager Robin Nymann told onGamers. "Despite BuLba's great early game to really put the team ahead, we started playing afraid. We didn't want to make the mistakes that we had made in The Summit qualifiers, thus we ended up not capitalizing on the start. We threw away our lead and let them back into the game."

"From the sideline perspective, it shook us up and with the fight that DeMoN and BuLba had with Sneyking in the jungle, we started to play even more nervous and ultimately we fell so far behind that we were unable to come back."

onGamers sat down with Team Liquid's Sam 'BuLba' Sosale and Sneaky Nyx Assassins` Captain Brian 'FLUFFNSTUFF' Lee on their teams' respective performances on first day of qualifiers heading into Day 2. Sosale's interview can be found below. Read the full interview with Lee here.

Heading into the qualifiers, Liquid has gone from being undisputed favorites to industry analysts questioning if the team would make top 2, back to being a front-runner again. How has this been felt within the team?

Trying not to care too much about that. We have been through so much that in the end it's just our own goals that matter. We are confident no matter what the public says.

Do you believe higher expectations of the team to perform with DeMoN just joining have affected the team's play?

No, our losses were usually vs EG and I think EG is and was just a better team than us. I think Demon fits fine in our roster and he adds an extra element that we lacked.

We've seen you try out some role swaps yesterday and today. What was the goal and did you learn anything useful about yourselves in the process?

We just played for fun in those games. Nothing for serious because adl's group stage matches literally mean nothing because there are only 4 teams in the group and top 4 advance.

You've been playing fairly slow paced games during the qualifiers. How do your more aggressive players fit into this game plan?

i think it just looks like that. We are just playing it like that because these games matter a lot.

During the last few weeks it has looked that Liquid has often had unclear calls or different purposes in the later portions of the game. How did you work to solve these issues?

We had some differences in opinion and mistakes in the later portions. It's something that just needs experience and hopefully we get it.

You've gone through your hardest opponents for the groupstage, with NAR as your only loss of the day. What decided the game from your perspective?

I think there was a bad team fight near Roshan and we lost a lot of map control from it. To be honest I think we should have won the game after SF died bottom and I stole his triple stack in the jungle, but with a bit of cocky play from Demon and I, we made him gain some of it back. Otherwise the game was even up until the fight near our ancients.

What are you looking to improve on for the rest of the qualifiers?

Just play our own game. We are confident for day 2.