nitr0 on tech delays: "It was pretty stressful, but I'm glad that we could keep it together"

Liquid's captain spoke to HLTV after Liquid won their match at the Americas RMR following a prolonged delay.

The BLAST.tv Paris Major Americas RMR got off to a slow start as matches took nearly two hours to get going due to technical issues. Liquid hit the ground running in their match against 00NATION when games finally got underway, but had their momentum temporarily halted by server issues before closing out the game, 16-4.

We spoke to Nick "⁠nitr0⁠" Cannella after the game, with the in-game leader sharing that while the technical issues and extended delay did impact the team, they were just happy to score a dominant win to kick off their run. He also spoke to the team's preparation coming into the RMR after they had a rocky showing against paiN at ESL Pro League Season 17 and in the BLAST Spring Americas Showdown, as well as shared what his team is doing to address recent performance issues.

Obviously a long-ass Bo1. Just tell me first, did that extended tech delay affect you at all?

It didn't... I mean, we still had a really good result obviously. We were in the server getting ready to play, and then they were like oh wait, the power went out. So we had to wait another hour and a half or two hours, so we were focused and then we had to get off the computers and do other stuff and then refocus. Ultimately it was pretty stressful, but I'm glad that we could keep it together and have a solid result here for our first match. We tend to start slow at tournaments usually, so a 16-4 is really good from us, historically. But yeah, the tech delays are really crazy right now.

It's going to be quite a long day, another couple of hours of matches to play. How does that affect you in terms of having to refocus for the rest of the day now, how much pressure does that put on you for such a long day?

We have a pretty big buffer before our next match, obviously we don't know who we play until all the matches finish, so we just got to figure out what we want to do. Do something together as a team during the break cause you know, we got good sleep last night, we had really good prep and stuff, but obviously we can't prep until we know who we play. We'll probably just hang out for a bit, watch some matches, see how the results are going, you can kinda see who is going to win and then predict and start mentally preparing.

There's a lot of ambiguity so far this tournament with all the tech issues and stuff, so we're just going to keep on playing it by ear and keep playing it however it goes. It is what it is.

You had that result versus paiN online in the BLAST Showdown, and then also you lost to them in EPL right before that. With those two losses and then coming in here with this dominant win, how does it feel being able to bounce back from those losses?

Yeah, 16-4 is obviously a really good result. We had a pretty bad result vs paiN, that was a pretty hard series for us. They'd just beat us previously before that, we played them in the Showdown, and we lost six pistols in that series and it was 16-13, like one of the closest maps. We looked back it, we won the majority of gun rounds, but we didn't win any pistols so... we really took a step forward and looked at patterns, seeing what is going on, what we could fix, what we could be stronger with, and when you win pistols it definitely helps a lot, as you can see. Overall, so far so good.

There wasn't a big gap between the end of the Showdown and this event, what did you do to refocus coming into this?

It was more on the individual to figure out what is going on, what you can do better as a player and as a teammate. We've had some good talks obviously, we know that we're still a really good team, and we're just trying to figure out what we can do differently to get a different mindset/mentality moving forward into this tournament. Ultimately, we just had some good talks, and we're just trying to make sure that we can find that consistency within our team.

Some of the narrative this year has shifted toward your team struggling a little bit, but your results haven't been awful — you had a 3-4th in Katowice, and obviously you lost to paiN in EPL playoffs. What is your opinion in terms of the level you've shown so far this year?

I think the biggest thing from this year compared to last was we had a lot more practice in Europe. That is the biggest difference in my eyes at least. I think it's a lot of recency bias, and obviously our last tournaments haven't been good, but before that we were consistently making playoffs. We just haven't won a tournament yet. We'll have to see what happens at the Major, if we win the Major then obviously people aren't going to be talking about these losses you know, so that's what we're trying to focus on, just focus on the future and figure out our team within the internal team stuff.

Lastly just touching on NAF's performance, a really good game from him in this match, but in general he's been playing well for you as a whole. YEKINDAR and EliGE's performances have dropped off a bit compared to last year, can you give me some insight into what that situation is like in the team with that, if there have been any changes in roles or anything like that?

There hasn't really been many changes from last year to this year in terms of tactics, I think it's more upon the individual right now to figure out how they can do better in-game. NAF is obviously a really solid player, and he has games where he does really good randomly, but recently he has been playing pretty good in practice, playing good in matches, so it's no surprise he just played really well today. In terms of YEKINDAR and EliGE, I think we're trying as a team to figure out how we can make them more impactful in the server, we're just trying to throw out some ideas, help them out within the team and just going from there really.