It hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows for Team Liquid.
This was a roster brought together to win tournaments.
There's championship credentials coursing through the veins of this team from start to finish.
Re-adding Twistzz and supplementing him with cadiaN and skullz seemed like it would be the move that finally brought trophies back to Team Liquid - but so far, it hasn't been that way.
It seems, however, that it's only a matter of time.
TL have already collected a list of losses that they wouldn't have foreseen in their nightmares pre-construction of this team.
Important losses to M80 and Nouns in qualifiers, and map losses to Party Astronauts and Wildcard aren't exactly results that fill Team Liquid fans with confidence - but there are some interesting wins in there too.
Spirit and GamerLegion fell to Liquid at BLAST Premier Spring Groups, which shows there's something there.
This might be a team that rises to the occasion and plays up to the opposition.
That's... not really good enough, though.
This isn't a team that's meant to be an upset-team.
It's probably a bit early to panic, though.
cadiaN has shown he can lead and create a top-tier team, but it wasn't instant on Heroic. It took a long, long time for that team to be world-beaters.
They started as a decent team with a bit of upset potential and ended under cadiaN as one of the most feared teams in the world.
Team Liquid fans - you can mark this part of the curve as 'you are here' on the former. Whether you get to the end of the curve is yet to be determined.
In fact, if one looks at the individual pieces Team Liquid have, one can easily argue that mano a mano TL could be even better than Heroic.
Twistzz is a legendary player who has been part of two dominant teams, a level of experience and prestige Heroic could only dream of. NAF and Sjuush aren't too dissimilar, and YEKINDAR has highs that resemble the ones that TeSeS has.
skullz is the wildcard in this team - but lots of great teams have a wildcard.
It might be too early to say.
Sorry for the cop-out.
skullz is supremely talented. Mechanically, it's hard to find fault, and he doesn't seem to make too many mistakes either. That said, he's going to be stress-tested harder than ever, and we'll quickly see whether he can hang at this level.
He is very good, but very good players get chewed up and spat out very quickly at the top level. Grim, for example, is a very good player who wasn't quite ready for the level when he joined Liquid - or at least, wasn't ready for the role of being the failsafe.
skullz might be a bit different, though. He is naturally a bit more comfortable being the anchor, and his skillset suits the roles he'll probably end up taking.
That could free up NAF to take slightly more aggressive roles and become more of a pack rifler a la stavn.
We all know NAF has the ability to be more than an overqualified support player, but whether his destiny is actually to be more of a star player is something we are yet to see.
skullz might step into a pack rifler role and become more of a star or even as a hard entry. But if Liquid take on Heroic's system, everyone will need to be aggressive and take control in certain situations.
The Brazilian can be that player, but the question is whether he can be elite at it.
Not quite yet. But Showdown can be somewhere where they start to grow into a championship-calibre team.
There are some very, very good teams here, and not getting through this gauntlet isn't shameful - as long as we see some growth.
They started to bring it all together a little bit at the end of the IEM Dallas qualifiers as they smacked Nouns 2-0 to qualify, and while the calibre of opposition here at Showdown is higher, often so is their performance against top teams.
This team has all the pieces to be one of the best in the world, and that starts here.
If Team Liquid are good, prove it now.
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