Epitacio "⁠TACO⁠" de Melo spoke to HLTV.org about the busy online season and the difficulties Liquid is having while trying to get their first big title.

Liquid arrived in Moscow as one of the favorites for the title at the $300,000 tournament, and lived up to the tag in their first game, dominating Swole Patrol on Nuke and Inferno.

The plan is to keep on doing what they have been doing, TACO says

After Liquid's opening game of the tournament, we spoke to TACO about the team's inability to close out at ESL One New York, how that affected them, and reminisced of his experiences under the SK and Luminosity banners.

The online season started, there are a lot of games to play, how has that been going for you guys, playing ECS and EPL at the same time?

It is going bad, even though we have good standings, I feel it is hard to prepare for the matches because we don't really have time. We usually prepare for every match that we play but we don't have time to do this for every opponent. We also play the same teams four times, on four maps. So it is kind of weird and it is also hard to practice because if we want to practice we have to play four officials per day and then two or three more maps of practice, which is kind of too much. So I don't really like it, but that is how it is and that is what we have. The online leagues are also really important because they give spots to really big tournaments. We have to give our best to qualify, for us at least it is a big deal, but I don't feel like we are playing to our full potential.

We have to give our best to qualify, for us at least it is a big deal, but I don't feel like we are playing to our full potential Epitacio "⁠TACO⁠" de Melo about online leagues

As you said, you can't really prepare that much, it is mostly playing your basics, defaults? What is the approach like, in more detail, for a game you have in EPL for example?

We just play our game, of course, it depends on the teams because I feel like we are one of the best teams in the league, when we play a weak team, we play basic CS, normal stuff, nothing much, we don't use a lot of strats, we don't use a lot of weird things, we don't do anti-strats for example. Against teams that we know have a chance to beat us, we know that is going to be a difficult match, so we try using everything that we have. That is the approach we go with, but we lost to a lot of teams that we shouldn't have lost to. It is so difficult, I don't know if it is the right approach, but we don't really have time to prepare for every team.

Something that has to be touched on is the New York grand final that you couldn't close out. You, as someone that had won a lot of tournaments in the past, coming together with the Liquid guys that had issues, not in being a good team, but just getting the big wins. How has that dynamic worked out and how did the team feel after that final?

Of course, we felt really bad because we wanted to win this tournament and we knew that we were the favorites, we knew that we had everything to win that tournament. In my opinion, we were the better team, we practiced really hard, Na`Vi lost early in the tournament which helped us, FaZe lost as well. So we had everything to win that tournament.

And of course, when we lost it, we felt really bad as a team, we felt really bad. It was a hard moment for us, but, in the end, the thought that we had was just, ok, let's move on and let's forget about this. Let's try to work on our mistakes, the mistakes we had in-game, because of course, it doesn't matter how good we did in the tournament, we still had a lot of mistakes so we have to fix that. And we just wanted to move on, forget about it, and just keep working. Of course, we still want to win, but it was still a really good run that we had at the beginning of the second season. We got semi-finals at the Major, finals in New York as well, we were feeling really good as a team, we are just going to work out the mental stuff now.

You had a pretty decent online season, came here to EPICENTER, and now the thinking is - continue doing what you are doing and it will bring results sooner or later?

Exactly, that is how we are dealing with it, let's just keep working, doing our thing, one day it is going to happen. Also, we are working with our sports psychologist and I'm pretty sure that he is going to help us a lot. I don't know how to explain what happens, it is just weird. (laughs) When it comes to that moment that we are close to winning the tournament, we just shut down. I don't know how to explain it, if I knew how to explain it I would just fix it (laughs). I don't know, it is a mental thing from the whole team, it is not one player, not two players, it is the team. We are going to just work on it.

When it comes to that moment that we are close to winning the tournament, we just shut down. I don't know how to explain it, if I knew how to explain it I would just fix it Epitacio "⁠TACO⁠" de Melo

I'm presuming this wasn't something you ever encountered in the SK times? Did you ever find yourself in situations like this?

In SK, we never had this problem, to be honest, I remember, in 2017, we played eight grand finals and we won all eight. We never had this problem in closing out games. But I also remember our LG times, when we started doing good in tournaments, it took some time to win the first one, thank god it was the Major. Before the Major we lost IEM Katowice to fnatic, we had a 13-2 lead in the first half of Overpass and we won the pistol round with fnx aceing, and then we still lost the map. And then we went to Inferno, which we had an 11-4 half, we won the pistol round again, and then we lost the map, again. Before that we had DreamHack Leipzig, against Na`Vi in the grand final, we were up 1-0, and the second map, Cobblestone, we also threw away.