​DBLTAP’s Jarek “DeKay” Lewis caught up with Team Liquid’s Nicholas “Nitr0” Cannella after Liquid advanced to the semifinals of the FACEIT London Major with a 2-1 win against HellRaisers.





Jarek “DeKay” Lewis: What was said after Dust2? What was the mentality heading out and coming back in?





Nick “Nitr0” Cannella: It was our first map loss this entire circuit, so we were just telling each other “the major started now. This is our first tough loss, so let’s refocus and keep the emotions out of it.” It worked out.





JL: So there wasn’t a lot of negativity or things that needed to be corrected. It was just a quick regroup?





NC: We didn’t have any issues on Dust2; I think we just got outplayed. It wasn’t an internal emotional problem. It was more of us just not playing our game. I don’t know if we were nervous or something, but we had a reset, and I think everyone was fired up for the last map.





JL: Going back to Mirage: The T-side looked super clinical. Was that more because of prep you’d put in for the team? Or was that just kind of how you want to approach the map every time?





NC: It was prep in the sense of I created how we were gonna face the T-side, but it wasn’t an anti-strat. If I see a certain thing from a certain player, I’m gonna try to use that one thing as a gimmick. Recently the last two matches on Mirage, we haven’t had any issues with taking map control in that sense. But connector is harder to take, so we told ourselves we’re gonna try to take ladder. So it was mostly a game plan that worked out for us.





JL: How does it help you guys having some of the guys on the team who have been there before, been to this stage of the Major. Does that help the other guys who this might be their first time making it this far?





NC: I know NAF is pretty pumped about it. He’s gonna get the in-game pin. He’s wanted that for a while. In my opinion, though, I think we’re all treating it as another different tournament. We’re not picturing it as a Major and not putting extra pressure on ourselves. We’re picturing it like an ELEAGUE or an ESL event. Any of these big stage events we’ve already played. We’re trying to get the emotions out of the picture and focus on the game.





JL: With the win on Cache, how confident are you in your map pool?





NC: I think our map pool is definitely the best it’s ever been right now. I think during this whole entire circuit, we’ve only played Inferno, Mirage and Cache. We didn't play our weaker maps. We didn’t play Nuke, Overpass, Dust2. So during the last four or five days, we’ve focused on the maps we haven’t been playing in the tournament already, and then fixing the mistakes on that map. We want to try to stay fresh on this map, so that’s been the game plan.





JL: You guys have placed well in a lot of events recently, but you’ve had a lot of runner-up finishes, especially to Astralis. How hungry are you guys to win one of these?





NC: We’re not really thinking about that because I think that would add ion pressure. Everyone’s saying we’re gonna win the Major and all that crap, but we’re not letting that affect us, at least from the outside point of view. But I think from an outside point of view, we’re trying to not let it affect us. If we’re gonna win a tournament, we’re gonna win a tournament. It would be fate. If we’re on our top peak this tournament, we should be able to win this tournament and every other tournament we play. Recently, Astralis has been the best team in the world. They kind of dropped off from their high point, in my opinion, so maybe now would be the time.





JL: How does this run feel different than others you’ve been part of?





NC: This feels way different from the last few Majors. We’ve had stand-ins at the last two Majors or three Majors. Getting out of groups, it wasn’t as an expectation, but I wasn’t as pumped as i was before. Before, we weren’t doing anything in the scene. We were an average team. Now, we kind of stepped up our expectations, and we want to put all our effort into winning the tournament instead of getting out of groups. The weaker teams like that such as HellRaisers, compLexity, the lower teams, I think their expectations were just get out of groups and they’re satisfied. That’s how we used to be back in the day, but now we want more.





Photo by bart Oerbekke/ESL