Counter Strike: Global Offensive legend Richard “shox’ Papillon left his spot on Team Liquid after they failed to live up to his expectations in the major this week. But not before offering a fairly damning look at some of the problems in the North American scene.

According to a recent interview given to 1PV, a French outlet, conditions in America were far from ideal when he crossed the ocean to train with his team.

When asked about his recent trip to the states to meet his team and train as a unit, he said the NA-based players took too much time off while he was in the country, and the quality of training was not conducive to creating a world-beating team.

To be clear, he was not calling out the team in particular or saying they had more time off than their peers. But when you put that in the context of shox having come from Team Vitality in Europe it does speak to a cultural difference between the two regions. That’s before you get to the fact that Liquid are one of the richest teams in CSGO and were flying in a new player before a major, showing their commitment to performing well at the event.

Not a new problem

The fact that their new French signing had just flown across the world to practice with the team for the major would probably have meant that in shox’s mind they were going to be working really hard, but that wasn’t the case. Others have already pointed out the issues of getting good practice in the US, but it’s somewhat shocking to still see this level of ambivalence in the run-up to the biggest tournament of 2022 so far.