TACO: "We didn't lose our motivation at all, we are still working really hard"

We caught up with Epitacio "⁠TACO⁠" de Melo at IEM Sydney to hear about MIBR's recent results and their struggle to find consistency.

MIBR opened their campaign in Australia with a 16-11 win over Grayhound, getting revenge for the defeat which eliminated them from the tournament last year.

Following the match, we interviewed TACO quizzing him about the loss to Luminosity at ESL Pro League, the status of other Brazilian teams, and skipping the first three ECS qualifying cups.

Recapping the last two events, you had a good second day at BLAST Pro Series Miami, almost made it to the grand final, and then you played at EPL, where you lost to Luminosity but other than that it was also good. So what caused that loss to Luminosity, because without that I feel like you would be looking like a much more solid team coming here?

The defeat against Luminosity was an off day for us, a really bad day. And of course, props to them that they had a really great game, steel in particular, he played some great CS that day, but it is still a really bad result. We are still trying to figure out how to be consistent as we are in some matches that we play. Some matches we play really well, some matches we play really bad and we are working on it.

Of course, we want to always play well, for example as we played against Astralis in Miami, or the whole second day in Miami. That is something we are trying to figure out. Other than that, I think we are still practicing really hard, we didn't lose our motivation at all, we are still working really hard, I'm pretty sure that for the next events, if we figure out how to be consistent, it is going to work out and we are going to get great results.

Touching on the other Brazilian teams, Luminosity now qualified for the Pro League Finals, INTZ played FURIA in the final of the ECS cup and then FURIA qualified for the ECS Finals. What are your thoughts on these teams that are on the rise right now, and the players that are in them? What can we expect from them going forward?

I think FURIA is surprising everyone right now. For me it is nice because we have another great Brazilian team and they are a team I'm following since I came to the US. They are becoming better and better every day, and for us in Brazil, for every Brazilian player, that is awesome. I know them, I really like those guys, they are really humble and work really hard as well, so I'm really happy that Furia is doing great right now.

We also have INTZ and Luminosity, they had some bad results lately but it seems like they are evolving a lot. Luminosity seems to be really bad online and when it comes to LAN they do really well. I don't know if it is bad or if it is good because CS:GO nowadays, to qualify for the big events, you have to play online. I think that is a problem for Luminosity, but they have really great players, they have HEN1, boltz now, they only have great players there and they can beat any team in the world, they have done that in the past. About INTZ, I think they are a really new team right now, they changed their lineup, felps left them to join us so I think the best part of that team is kNgV-, he is one of the best Brazilian players. I love this guy and I hope he can succeed in the future.

Coming back to you guys and Australia. You weren't a part of the team last year when SK lost to Grayhound and got eliminated, bad memories, but now you got the win. So what was the feeling like regarding that match?

I think I said that a few times already, we are taking it step-by-step, and what I told the guys at BLAST Pro Series Miami was "We lost 0-5 in Brazil, there is nothing worse than that. Let's just play, if we win a map here we already made progress". (laughs) So when we came to IEM Sydney I continued the same way: "Last year you lost to Grayhound. If you win against Grayhound now, it is better than last year, so it is progress!". (laughs) We are taking it step-by-step.

Of course, we knew we were favorites against Grayhound, we had a good match today. Yeah, on the T-side it wasn't working because it was 15-4 for us and we decided to just play the basics, we didn't want to show the strats we spent one or two weeks practicing, we didn't want to show everything that we created and changed. So we just played basic, of course we lost some rounds, the game got closer, but we could close it out in the end.

Your schedule is getting easier after this event, but in the meantime you haven't played a single ECS cup, and now that it is only the last two, it is pretty hard for you to qualify for the Finals. Is that something you had in mind, what was the decision that you made regarding ECS?

We knew that it would be really hard to play ECS, but in our minds we thought that we could play everything. Of course, we still have a chance, and of course, it is going to be hard, but we are planning to play the biggest tournaments and ECS is included in this list. As I said, it is now really hard to qualify, we know that, but we play big tournaments almost every week. Even though ECS is a really important one, it is not a big deal if we don't qualify.

We are going to play the two weeks of qualifiers and try, if it happens, it is really good because it is a big tournament to play, but if we don't qualify it is alright as well, we have more time to practice, to prepare for other big tournaments that we are playing, so it is not a big deal for us.