jokasteve: "You don't get a silver medal"
After the team's victory against FURIA in the semifinals, we sat down with Steve "jokasteve" Perino to talk about Liquid's performance in Dallas as well as their schedule this year.
In the group stage, the FaZe game, was how they played unexpected?
For us, we were confident. FaZe is one of those teams where we are always aware of the firepower that they have. Every time you play FaZe, it's like what FaZe am I getting? Am I getting the FaZe where every time I peek a corner my head is getting head blown off, or are we playing the FaZe that seems like the current iteration of FaZe that seems pretty beatable? Now with NEO, it seems like they are a lot more structured. They started picking up the AUG as well, which is a nice change to see.
For us, next time we play them we are going to have to look into what the veto is going to play out like. We were really confident in our Nuke, and in this tournament it has been really hit or miss. So we were like, "if we win Dust 2, going into Nuke, we probably have it." For this tournament we are honestly taking a pretty lax approach. Our sports psychologist Jared Tendler is here, and we don't always get the pleasure of having him travel with us. We kind of prioritized this event as one we really want to do well in.
For the FaZe game it was really a lot more focus on us and keeping chaos in the comms down, and mood/atmosphere up. In Miami when we played FaZe, we were getting rolled, and I remember a story from one of the guys, I think it was NAF, who said he hit tab and saw rain was 20-0 and then they just started laughing, saying like "what did you eat for breakfast today?" Then once the mood lightened up, we all started playing way better and actually clawed ourselves back into the game after getting completely slaughtered. It's really just focusing on us.
With FURIA smashing Vitality and beating Fnatic as well, what did you expect from the Brazilians?
From my perspective, I'm not all-in like Eric "adreN" Hoag, but observing the room, the coach, the players, we didn't take FURIA lightly at all. We knew for them this is everything, this is their Major, if you will. It's a lot easier to say "Liquid is the #2 team in the world" or whatever, but we knew that Nuke was something they were going to pull on us, so we had no surprises there, we did a lot of prep. Props to them, they actually changed quite a bit from their previous games when we played Nuke. This morning, adreN and our sports psychologist got here pretty early and they started going over all the FURIA Nuke demos, and they caught some really cool tendencies. In the game, some of them weren't coming true like we thought. It was one of those things where you think "Did we out-game plan ourselves?"
They played super well and honestly, from my perspective, I met their owner, their sports psychologist, and a few of their players at this event, and they are one of the nicest most respectful, humble teams I've ever met. I hope nothing but the best for them. At ECS I know they are gonna be there, they have a bunch of tournaments coming up in a row that they are gonna be present at. So if they keep this form - I talked to them after the game, I was like "guys, you just need to learn. Look at the teams you just played" - I think they also played ENCE and it was a pretty close series as well. I was like "you just need to learn something from every time you play."
For me it seems like their foot is always on the gas pedal, they don't know when to be passive. If they do, they are gonna be a crazy good team. We didn't take them lightly, we prepped, we did everything we would as if we were playing Astralis. We know that this tournament is huge for us and it's a really good shot towards the Intel Grand Slam.
How is it looking for the final against ENCE? You guys didn't get to face them at summit, with the Vitality game there.
For me, ENCE is an interesting team. At the Major, they definitely surprised us. Now we're able to see a lot more of their games. We are definitely going to be more prepared. We definitely want our revenge. I think we are like dead even in games with them. At BLAST Sao Paulo, we tied them, and then at summit we played them in the group stage and we went 1-1. So for the finals, the veto is what I think is going to decide it - if it's a standard veto or not, without obviously revealing too much.
We're not underestimating ENCE anymore, we think they are really really good. I know our team at first was kinda like "it was a one-off Major run, we'll get them next time." But I think they've proven everyone wrong, that they are the real deal. So now we're going to treat them like the real deal, and this is our time, we're in America, the crowd is going to be for us. Again, we have our sports psychologist here, who I can't praise enough for how much he helps. The Liquid choking meme, all the second places - we are pretty much sick with it and we do want to start winning. This is such a good opportunity, we're in another finals, I think we've made every finals but the Major this year.
After you were announced for the Cologne GG.BET Invitational, you made the TwitLonger about Liquid's schedule. Do you think the packed schedule had a big impact on the team's performance?
I wouldn't say it impacts our performance now, but last year we were on the road for over 254 days out of the year. We really felt the mental and physical strain of it all. When it comes to picking out a schedule for the future, we have to be really cognizant of that. Obviously, looking at it now it's easy to see "Hey if we don't make ECS, then we should try to go to Cologne." At the time, we didn't know that was going to be the case, so we had to last second try to get back into Cologne, because we think it's a great event.
For me it's really balancing the schedule and we weigh player's input super heavily into that. We also look at what makes sense as well. For our team, we really get burnt out after two months on the road, three months on the road, and going to Cologne would have put us on the road for well over two months. That was something we just weren't comfortable with at the time, especially with the Major being announced and the player break being shortened - it was really something we weighed. Another thing is, when you're dealing with being a manager, with I think five different tournament organizers during that patch of events - it's hard. Trying to figure out which flights, what tournament, what time slots you need to be there.
To play summit and then get to this event for example, we finished the final, we went back to our hotel, packed our stuff, got on the shuttle bus for 1:30 in the morning flight, to fly here and do media day at 9:20 in the morning. We took a redeye to go here, nap, and then you play a match the next day. You can only do that for so many events in a row, before you're like "wait, we overdid it." Now our results are lacking, you're not seeing us bring new strats to events, and it's just a total failure.
With that in mind, I'm assuming you are prepared to skip something if you need to?
It sucks, because honestly our schedule is so good. Every tournament is so good. Every tournament now a days has some type of history, has top teams there. If you miss a tournament, it sucks every time, but you have to be putting yourself first. I know it sucks for the fans, it sucks for the tournament organizers, but at the end of the day we need to take care of us and what we think is best for our team. That is priority number one.
Obviously there has been a lot of community drama around BLAST and particularly Astralis, do you think you guys could realistically be the actual best team in the world in the coming month or so?
I think the only thing holding us back from being the best team in the world is ourselves. I think we just need to get over mental hurdles. I think we have all the skill you could ever ask for. We have all the talent, we're putting in the work, we're bootcamping, we're checking all the boxes as we go, and we get to the final and it's so frustrating - a lot of the time we feel like we're losing to ourselves. That's what's the most frustrating. Obviously you can't be perfect all the time and there are gonna be tournaments where you're not bringing your A game if you will.
We feel like we can hands down be the best team in the world. Even though we're doing some historic runs at events and doing things that an NA team has never done for this length of time, we don't feel like we've done shit because we don't have the trophy case to show it. You don't get a silver medal. I've seen comments like "at least Liquid are making money" or whatever, like honestly we don't even care.
It's one thing for me - For me personally, I'm always the one that gets the trophy, the few that we have, and when I bring it back in the office in the training facility, all of our staff members are there and they are clapping. After you make like 15 finals, its like "cool dude, where is the trophy?" For us, we still are really hungry, and that is something I am super proud of the team for, and I am kind of blessed for it as well. I think one day we'll look back and be like "damn, what we did was really cool." And we did break NA history, but for us it doesn't mean anything without the trophy.
Looking forward to the next events-
Want me to break down our whole schedule?
Sure
So from here we go home for about three days, then we're gonna take a bootcamp in Malta. At the Malta bootcamp we're gonna do the online qualifier for Cologne. We fly from there to France for Pro League Finals. Then we fly from to another bootcamp in Utrecht. Utrecht to Cologne, and then Cologne to....
I think it's BLAST LA after that.
Yeah, I think we go Cologne, BLAST LA, then IEM Chicago, and then the break and the Major. So we'll be on the road now for almost two months, which kind of goes against our philosophy, but at the same time these events are big. We feel like we have time now to botcamp, prepare, and refresh while we're on the road. So that's like our schedule coming up, we look to win every event if possible, we want the Grand Slam obviously. We want to be the best Liquid we can be.
