What to expect from Liquid v. Imperial at BLAST Open Lisbon 2025

Liquid will face Imperial this Saturday, March 22th at BLAST Open Lisbon 2025. Liquid and Imperial are both on the brink of elimination after losing to Eternal Fire and G2, respectively, in the group B opener.

An elimination would be disastrous for Liquid, considering the amount of VRS points they'd lose. So, all the pressure is on Russel "Twistzz" Van Dulken's troops.

Liquid will focus on preparing their T-sides

The main reason why Eternal Fire beat Liquid so convincingly at BLAST Open Lisbon was because of the North Americans' uninspiring T-sides. Liquid showed some great stuff at the start of Dust2, but couldn't adapt once Eternal Fire figured they were focusing more on the A bombsite.

Anubis was even worse as Liquid only won four rounds, despite the map heavily favoring the T-side, and none of these round wins were consecutive.

• NertZ had a shy game v. Eternal Fire, but he'll likely have the upper hand against Imperial

• ultimate struggled against woxic when it came to head-to-head opening duels, but he was good to find openings against Eternal Fire's riflers

• Liquid haven't lost to Brazilians since the PGL Copenhagen Major in 2024 when they lost to FURIA

Imperial have nothing to lose

Of course, Imperial want to climb some positions in the Valve Regional Standings (VRS), but BLAST Open Lisbon 2025 is their first big tournament in 2025.

Not to mention, the team are still working on integrating Richard "chayJESUS" Seidy after he replaced the veteran João "felps" Vasconcellos in January.

• Imperial put up a good fight against G2 and could have won Inferno if they didn't lose a silly round to a force buy

• try had a good showing despite facing m0NESY, one of the three best players in the world

• zakk is a very experienced coach, and generally makes good use out of his tactical timeouts

Previous matchups

Liquid and Imperial haven't played one another in the past six months. In fact, their last match dates back to 2022, when both teams had different lineups.

Likely vetoes

It's hard to measure how good Imperial are as they're playing their first big tournament of the year at BLAST Open Lisbon. Dust2 seems to be their go-to, but given that Liquid have a negative record in it, the map is likely out of the cards.

This is how we predict the veto will play out:

• Imperial remove Ancient (their permaban)

• Liquid remove Dust2 (no reason to risk letting Dust2 open against Imperial)

• Imperial pick Inferno (they have a 80% winrate in it)

• Liquid pick Anubis (they're fairly good in it)

• Imperial remove Nuke (they have better maps)

• Liquid remove Train (they only played it once this year)

• Mirage is left over as the decider