Image via Ubisoft/@itsmeerror
First Ninjas in Pyjamas, then FURIA Esports, and now Team Liquid. TSM FTX is on a journey to put Brazil back in its place following a year of LATAM supremacy.
Today’s win against Liquid is just an example of the amusing potential this team has. We saw a very confident side, able to communicate, stay calm in the most stressful situations. Everything looked on point, the team was winning their gunfights.
TSM FTX’s dominance lay in the team’s ability to obtain entry kills. Bryan “Merc” Wrzek did an impeccable job registering nine entry kills, one more than all of Liquid's entry kills combined.
Chalet saw Jason “Beaulo” Doty dropping 22 kills, which would lead TSM FTX winning their map pick. It was a constant tug-of-war between him and the Brazilian duo Luccas “Paluh” Molina and André “nesk” Oliveira, which would eventually fall to the hands of the North American.
“A lot of people say they have the best fire players in the world but I actually believe we do, it’s just about confidence for us,” said Emilio “Geometrics” Leynez.
Team Liquid had the chance to redeem themselves in their map pick, Bank. However, just like on Chalet, the Brazilian’s attacks looked sloppy, incredibly slow, which combined with their struggles at obtaining entry kills the team was left with plenty of work to do in the dying seconds of their attacking rounds.
“Liquid likes to take their time, they are a slow team, they have holes like, there are openings that you can abuse, and we did a good job,” said Owen “Pojoman” Mitura.
It was frequent to see Liquid struggling on their takes, especially to the Basement. We often saw the Brazilians having to deal with plenty of utility in the last twenty seconds, and despite having a superiority in terms of men, dealing with an Echo or an Smoke then it is almost an impossible task to complete.
A clear example of that was Merc’s play on the first overtime round, where he faded away Liquid’s hopes to win the map.
“We did a better job, Liquid are really strong individually but they are very split up in the way they do things,” explained Pojoman.
It was by far not the best day for Team Liquid’s IGL Gabriel “AsK” Santos, who has changed the way Liquid's attacks work since joining the squad back in September. It is impossible to value his importance outside the server in this match, but he seemed off in the server. It wasn’t until grabbing four kills in round six of Bank when he seemed to find his momentum back.
Finally but not least, one of TSM FTX’s keys to take both maps was their tactical pause management. Both maps went to overtime, and in every one, TSM FTX used their tactical pause right after round twelve. That proved to be differential at planning their overtimes, as the team took all the overtime rounds played. Pojoman, the team’s coach, went through it and how much having them helped the team.
“For me it was really helpful, thank god the team was doing a really good job giving us rounds back and forth so I didn’t have to call it too early, having it for the overtime was really good because it let us, it let me talk about the defenses and what we wanted to run, and what we thought they would do on their attacks, so I think on both maps it made a difference, being able to adjust little things allowed us to come out on top,” he said.
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