Liquid secure YEKINDAR on permanent deal
YEKINDAR is no longer a stand-in for Team Liquid.
The organization of Team Liquid has announced the signing of Mareks “YEKINDAR” Galinskis, who has been playing under the banner as a stand-in since June when Ricard “shox” Papillon got benched from the roster.
In the past 3 months, the 23-year-old Latvian has impressed big time at Liquid, helping the team improve in all kinds of aspects. When YEKINDAR joined Liquid as a stand-in, he quickly got an influence on the team’s approach to the game and polished their tactics, making the North American squad improve on the server and get good results, most notably a runner-up finish at the ESL Pro League Season 16 event, which is Liquid’s deepest offline placement since BLAST Pro Series Global Final in 2019, and a 1st place finish at America's RMR.
Therefore, it doesn’t come as a surprise that many Liquid members have wanted YEKINDAR on a permanent basis for quite some time, as they have repeatedly credited him and expressed their wish of getting him as a permanent player on the roster.
However, the task of making that a reality showed to be very difficult as Liquid couldn’t buy him out of his contract with Virtus.pro due to US-imposed sanctions on the organization and its ties with the Russian government. The situation regarding that had been up in the air for a while, but just a few days ago, the 23-year-old Latvian gave an update on the matter, revealing that he had bought himself of the contract with Virtus.pro.
Here you can read how much YEKINDAR had to pay for his buyout:
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