nitr0: “We have a bit of vengeance in us for this tournament”

Liquid have gone from strength to strength since adding Mareks “⁠YEKINDAR⁠” Gaļinskis, improving nigh on instantly and developing their performances with each event, the pinnacle of which was a runners-up finish at the most recent ESL Pro League.

Thus they were one of the favourites to take the IEM Rio Major, but losses to Heroic and Spirit ended their dreams before they could even make the playoffs.

Nick “⁠nitr0⁠” Cannella feels his team have arrived at BLAST Premier Fall Final with added fire in their bellies as a result of the Major disappointment, and he reflected on that fact as well as his team’s performance in their opening win against G2 in an interview with HLTV.

How do you feel starting your campaign with a victory?

It feels good, especially after the Major performance that we had, not winning against Spirit really hurt us. I feel like we have a bit of vengeance in us for this tournament, and obviously there’s some big circumstances potentially making Abu Dhabi at the end of the season. Ultimately if we don’t succeed here then we’re done for the season, and no one wants that so we’re definitely working really hard to get this victory.

To talk about Vertigo, you had a five-game loss-streak on it before winning here, how were you able to turn it around against G2?

We were 100% expecting them to pick that map, so we had good prep going into it. When it’s a map that you know an opponent is going to pick it’s easier to prep, right? We literally said if they don’t pick it, it doesn’t make any sense for their veto, so ultimately we were sure they were going to pick it. We had some good practice on it last week because we knew it would be a weak point for this tournament.

So it’s a bit of an advantage knowing who you are going to play, you can predict the vetoes?

Exactly, yeah.

One thing I wanted to ask about on Vertigo was there was a boost they used towards B site, where they were looking in from CT spawn towards the site. It’s not a boost I’ve seen before, were you guys ready for it?

Yeah, we’ve seen that boost before (smiles). The problem with it is like… I think it was a 3v3, and the triple-boost is good, but it gives away a lot of information, we know exactly where they all are, so it has its pros and cons.

Moving on to Mirage, you started off quite well in the first half and then it felt like it tapered off a little bit, G2 put quite a few rounds together. What do you think happened?

I think we had really good reads going against them, but I think maybe we were trying to force the issue too much, [force] our gameplan. We had a fallback plan, but the fallback plan wasn’t working as good as we thought it would, I think you see it a lot in professional game where Ts go big, and CTs adjust, and it’s up to you to adjust to their adjustment. So yeah, they had a really good CT side after that.

You mentioned earlier in the interview about being disappointed in your Major performance. Are you setting yourselves the standard of being one of the best teams in the world, being right at the top and challenging for titles?

Yeah, I think when we picked up YEKINDAR we instantly knew that we were going to be a better team, and our expectations immediately rose. We got really good tournament placements, we did well at Cologne, we won our group at BLAST, did pretty good at EPL with a second place, so our expectations rose pretty quickly. When that happens, you are kinda setting yourself up for disappointment if you don’t perform to those expectations, and realistically it’s hard to be a consistent top-five team with this small of a roster change. I think for short-term we’ve been doing really well, and I think we can just keep on improving on it. The longer that we’re together, the better we’ll be.