TACO: "We are really excited to play G2"

Our last interview of the day is with Epitacio "⁠TACO⁠" de Melo, whose Liquid beat NRG to proceed to the Group B winners match.

After a semi-final run at the Major, TACO & co. have kicked off their New York run with a win against NRG, meaning they will now face G2 for a spot in the playoffs at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

In the interview, TACO takes a lighthearted approach to Astralis' dominance, makes no excuses about playing an event so close to the Major, and shares his thoughts on Liquid's chances of winning in the Empire State, among other topics.

Tell me a little about traveling and attending an event three or four days after the Major. How did you guys handle that?

Yeah, I mean. Of course maybe we travel a lot and play at a lot of CS and it’s not healthy, but I don’t like to use it as an excuse, because you have to use the time you have to prove as much as you can. The day that we arrived the practice rooms weren’t ready, so we didn't practice, but yesterday morning we started playing deathmatch. We had some team practice as well.

We had prepared to play against NRG and we knew that they haven’t played in a tournament for a while, so we knew that they could just practice just to play against us since they knew that the first game was against our team. Of course it is easier for the team knowing what we’re doing, but we knew that and I don’t like using that as an excuse. I think it’s just how it is now and you have to adapt, do your best, and keep working really hard.

Did you feel like NRG prepared for you, that they knew what you were going to do? Did you find the match was a little harder than normal?

To be honest, no. We just played our game, but we did get surprised with the vetoes, because we didn’t know the map they were going to pick and they picked the map that we didn’t plan to pick as well (laughs). In the end, we just played our game and I didn’t feel like they were doing any anti-strats or whatever. Of course i'm pretty sure they studied us. They know the way we play because they watched the Major and we played a lot of games there, but I don't think it was a big deal. I don't think it made a difference in the end, really.

When you saw the draw was NRG, were you happy? Did you feel that this was a match you felt comfortable going into?

Yeah! Our record against NRG is good. I actually think that we were the better team and the favorites to win against them. Our map pool against them is really good as well. I really can't say I’m happy because CS:GO these days is really difficult, there are no ‘silly’ teams anymore, so we took this game seriously. We know that NRG were playing really well last season. Of course we felt that we were the better team, but we did prepare and did everything like we were playing against Astralis or something, although they are our kryptonite at the moment (laughs). We were not necessarily happy, but of course it’s better to play against NRG than FaZe, for example.

Talk to me about Astralis being your kryptonite. How are you guys going to get past them?

Well, it seems like Astralis are everyone’s kryptonite, right? (laughs) They are playing really well right now and it’s so difficult to play against them, but i’m glad that we were the only team to be able to take map away from them at the Major, it means something. But we are going to keep working really hard. We know that one day our time will come and we are going to keep working and working.

There is nothing more to do than to keep working, staying focused on the game and we have a good organization, good players, and a really good team with good results. Maybe not the results that we wanted since we haven’t won a tournament, yet. I think if we just keep working and doing our thing, practicing really hard, I’m pretty sure we can beat Astralis because we showed at the Major that we can beat them, but, of course, they are the best team in the world, so it’s super hard to read them and play against them as well.

As a team you have been achieving a lot of semi-final runs before the player break and so on. What do you need to get that tournament win under your belts?

We need Valve to ban Astralis. (laughs)

Well, you know, you are here in New York and they are not, so…

Well, like I said before, CS:GO nowadays is way different than it was before because anyone now can win a match or a tournament, there are no ‘silly’ teams. It is difficult, and I’m not sure what we need, but I think we just need to keep working the way we are doing now, keeping it steady and just work, work, work until one day we get there.

Did you and the team sit down after the Major and have a discussion before coming to New York about what you wanted to get out of the tournament, or?

Yeah, after the Major of course we were super sad because we lost to Astralis. To be honest, even though they are difficult to play against, we were expecting to win against them, and win the Major. We worked really hard during the bootcamp that we had and we were feeling really confident, as well. After the Major we just talked and we all feel proud of how hard we worked, and there is no reason to be sad or think we are a bad team or that things aren’t working. For this tournament we have the same goal, we want to win and we are very confident as we were at the Major, but we are going to take things step-by-step. Like I said before, CS:GO is so difficult these days and i’m pretty sure no matter what happens, we are going to keep trying and working hard.

To close it out, it’s as a bit unexpected that G2 beat FaZe. How is the team going to prepare going into that matchup? What is the feeling you get when it’s G2 instead of FaZe?

I think FaZe is a really good team. I don’t know what happened to them. I would say FaZe were the favorites to win against G2, I don’t know what happened. Maybe they had a bad day but G2 are practicing really hard from what I know. They played in the Major and that’s good but they have a lot of games and matches to study, so that’s a good point for us. They have really good players and experience as well, like, kennyS and shox, and if they go off then it will be a really difficult match for us. I didn’t watch their game because we were playing. We are kind of confident against G2. We have never really played against them, especially since I joined Liquid, so we are really excited to play against them.