Team Liquid, or just Liquid, is a prominent esports organization based in North America founded in 2000, with multiple different esports under their banner. Despite being well represented in different games, their flagship is undoubtedly their CS:GO team which has played a huge role in modern CS:GO.
Liquid has through the years possessed numerous talents and profiles on their roster with players like Nitr0, adreN, stanislaw, Hiko, and TACO, and one of the very greats in s1imple.
The Beginning
Liquid entered the CSGO scene in 2015 with the signing of Chill Guys, which consisted of the likes of Eric “adreN” Hoag, Keith “NAF” Markovic, and Nicolas “nitr0” Canella, that all three turned out to have a major impact on the future of the team. The trio was accompanied by Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski and Spencer “Hiko” Martin.
The Liquid team quickly cemented their name on the NA scene, and the strong North Americans got their first real taste of a big achievement when they ended 2nd after a legendary SK-Gaming roster at the ESL One Cologne Major in 2016. Liquid’s Ukrainian powerhouse Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev was firing on all cylinders at German Major, with superstar AWPer averaging a stellar 1.18 Rating – Sadly for him and Liquid, it wasn’t enough to take the title.
The Golden Days
After a long period of disappointing results and not full-filling their full potential, Liquid went on two sign the promising rifler Russel “Twistzz” Van Dulken in April 2017. The youngster provided some fierce and much-needed firepower and individual brilliance, which clearly was a fresh addition to the roster.
However, the real breakthrough year for Liquid and the time where they established themselves at the very top of Counter-Strike, happened first in 2018-19.
Through a near-ideal roster of Nitr0, NAF, EliGE, Stewie2K, and Twistzz, Liquid began to dominate not only their home ground of North America, but the entire CS:GO scene. This particular Liquid roster took home massive titles as ESL Pro League Season 9, IEM XIV Chicago, and BLAST Pro Series Los Angeles 2019, which meant that they surpassed the CS:GO titans from Astralis for a moment as the ruler of CS:GO.
Astralis vs Liquid would quickly prove out to be a true classic within the world of Counter-Strike, with both teams featuring two stellar and extremely strong rosters, who clashed against each other at one huge Grand Final after another in a two-year period.
2020-2021
Liquid lost their profiled in-game leader nitr0 in the mid-2020, owing to him switching to the other first-person shooter Valorant. A huge blow for the North Americans, which only got even worse when the superstar rifler Twistzz also decided to leave the team, later on in December.
The two replacements who should help Liquid back to the top ended up being Michael “Grim” Vince and the legendary Brazilian Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo. The new Liquid roster posted an impressive showing at the elite of CS:GO, however, FalleN and company couldn’t quite conquer a spot at the very top. It will be exciting to follow their journey and to see how long they can go.
Notable achievements
1st Intel Extreme Masters XIV – Chicago
1st ESL One: Cologne 2019
1st ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals
1st DreamHack Masters Dallas 2019
1st Intel Extreme Masters XIV – Sydney
2nd ESL One: Cologne 2016
2nd ELEAUGE CS:Go Premier 2018