“如果八强看不到两支西方队伍我会失望”——Broxah 谈 Worlds 2026、Caps 与 Team Liquid

Mads ‘Broxah’ Brock-Pedersen’s 2018 Fnatic roster is still remembered to this day as one of Europe’s finest in League of Legends, but now, as a content creator for Team Liquid, Broxah is hoping for a successful Worlds across the Western hemisphere.

From jungling in EU LCS at 19 years old to creating content for Team Liquid 10 years later, Broxah has seen Western esports shift from a player-led space to an increasingly professionalized environment.

Insider Gaming was invited to Team Liquid’s Utrecht headquarters by Team Liquid and SAP, where we had the chance to ask Broxah a few questions about Rasmus ‘Caps’ Winther, Team Liquid, Worlds 2026, and his true team allegiance.

Insider Gaming speaks to Broxah at Team Liquid Q&A (Select questions, asked by Insider Gaming)

Esports has changed a lot since 2016. How do you think Caps is still playing at the highest level?

I think there’s always going to be, in any sport, an element of talent that’s really important, and sometimes you just have a, I guess you could say, once-in-a-generation talent appearing in front of you that’s so much better than everybody else.

But then part of gaming is that the way we practice is so extreme. During my five years of playing, every year was a minimum of 12 hours a day, or just playing the game seven days a week. You don’t really have much off time.

You’ve got to be almost obsessive and in love with the game, and Caps, who recently was at the Hall of Fame in League of Legends, was one of those people who just wakes up every morning, and all he wants to do is embrace and play League of Legends, and talk about League of Legends and find ways to improve.

I think not only having that for a short period of time, but continuing to be in that mindset, be that dedicated, is really unique and special, and there’s only a handful of players in League of Legends that have really had that, to really keep going for such an extended period of time, because of how taxing it is.

So I think, I think the Liquid we’re seeing this year has been very consistent in League of Legends, I think there’s been some bumps in the road, but I’ve been really impressed by the team’s ability to figure out problems and really level up.

In the past, the Team Liquid roster that we’ve seen has had some clear, glaring weaknesses, which are hard to spot now, because all players are playing at such a high level individually, and all the structures around the team are really on point.

Obviously, you never know what’s going to happen, because the team has only played in North America, and we had a fun recent season facing the scary Korean teams, and how that’s going to play out.

At least here around the office, we are all expecting slash hoping that they are at least going to get out of the group stage, make it to the quarter-final, and hopefully show that with all these tools, with all the resources we have, everything we put into this, now we’re at a point where we can not just try to catch up, but where we can compete.

I can even give an example: one of the first international tournaments I played at, I was shocked because we were playing against a Chinese team, and on the way to the arena, we took a small bus, like we were just eight of us, we were five players, two coaches, and a manager, and right around the same time, a Chinese team pulled up in a little bus with 20 people,

We’re sitting there thinking, ‘Hmm, how are we supposed to compete with this?’ If these guys have so many resources, so many people involved, and we have not even half the staff, then it’s going to be a tough one, but I think the last three or five years, the Western teams have really tried to put more emphasis on all those outside factors to catch up.

We’ve seen a good amount of wins from the West against the East this year. Do you see that gap as being narrowed?

I think it’s always hard to say because I can’t remember a single World Championship where we came in saying that the Western teams, Europe and North America, would have a good chance. Everybody is always afraid of all the Korean teams.

I think that’s just been the case in esports for the last 20 years, going all the way to the StarCraft days, because they just have so much knowledge and experience. But I’m always really hopeful coming into it because 2018, when we made a deep run to the final, nobody thought it would be possible. Same thing when G2 made it in 2019.

I know my first was 2017, the year before, we were 0-4 on the group stage, and everybody was like, ‘Wow, no team has ever been 0-3 and made it out. This is impossible. These guys are 0-4,’ and then some magical thing happens, and we went 2-4 when tiebreakers win a qualifier.

So I’ve just seen a lot of surprises come up along the way. I would be a bit delusional to say that we should expect to be as good as Korea and China, but that said, I think there’s usually a couple of Eastern teams that don’t deal as well with the pressure and perform worse than expected.

And there’s one or two Western teams that actually exceed expectations and turn into a dark horse to go for a deep run, and I think in this World Championship that’s G2 from Europe and Team Liquid from North America.

I’m really hopeful for them, and I made my prediction of who makes it to the quarterfinals the other day, and I actually included both. So I would be a bit disappointed if we don’t see two Western teams in the quarterfinals. And then whether they can make it further, hard to say since the tournament hasn’t started for real and it’s a Swiss system.

So is your allegiance firmly in NA? If it’s a Grand Final and it’s a European team versus Team Liquid?

Well, I’m always going to be rooting for Team Liquid against pretty much anyone. They could be facing Fnatic, who I’ve played for over three years, and I’m sure they’ll still be rooting for Team Liquid.

But for me, it always becomes this interesting thing with Europe and North America, which is really cool because there are all these jokes and banter and hating on each other during the year, but at the end of the day the communities are so close and we just all want to succeed with Europe as well as with North America, and the other way around.

So as long as we’ve got the Western teams doing well, I’m kind of happy.

Header Image: (c) Team Liquid

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Darragh is an Esports Journalist for Insider Gaming specialising in Counter-Strike. He loves to explore how esports teams work, or why they very often do not.

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