Hey Now!

Welcome back to TL;DR. My goal here is to sneak into your inbox to give you a little bite sized update of everything that happened at your favorite esport team (that's us, right) this month. Because there is so much going on, how can one person possibly keep track of it all?

So. It only took 3 months of doing this to have a bit of a moral quandary about covering the Team Liquid news. Because what if it's not all trophies, butterflies, roses, rainbows? Is it important for us to cover the bad and share that with everyone just like we do the good? The ick with the joy? The slop with the slightly tastier slop?

I'm going to go with, yes. Yes it is our job here to talk about the things that aren't glamorous.

We cut a player from our Overwatch team who did an undeniably racist and undeniably avoidable text chat in scrims. In the process, we made our prospects for the year worse. For me; I get a lot of pride that we stand by our values by putting the human element overtop of competitive success aspirations.

If you'd like to read more because maybe ya missed it, here are Steve's comments on the matter: https://x.com/LiQuiD112/status/2033714029584318896 

You're willing to let us into your inbox, so we should be willing to be as upfront as possible. Now let's run down the news.

The TL;DR tl;dr

• 💣 CS is NA 

• 🧙 Race is LIVE

• 🐐 Rapha is GOAT

• 🐐 NESK is RETIRED

Full Athletics Breakdown:

Chess: Mr Fabiano Caruana took 3rd place in the 2026 American Cup. He lost to Levon Aronian. He's also currently competing in the FIDE Candidate Tournament where he won his opening bout vs Hikaru and drew his second round vs Anish.

Counter Strike: The team has played a few events with a few different rosters in March. With NertZ in ESL Pro League Season 23 Online, the team finished 2-3 in Swiss and didn't make the main event. Then jL stood in for Nertz at the Roman Imperium Cup VI LAN where the team took 4th after falling to OG and then Alliance. BUT THEN, and boy did I bury the lede… Nertz was traded to G2 for malbsMd. This makes TL once again an American team (Elige, NAF, malbsMd) in the eyes of VRS rankings. We played BLAST Premiere with malbs. Final placement, 9-12th after losses to Spirit and Mongolz.

CrossFire: Season 1 of the CrossFire Brazil league started on March 20th and the boys in brazil took their opening bout 2-0 W at the expense of NaVi.

DoTA: I'm not even an ounce salty about missing out on ESL Birmingham. The team did perform well at PGL Wallachia Season 7, finishing with a silver medal to Yandex's gold. It was a 2-3 grand final that didn't swing our way.

EAFC: Manu and Levi finished #1 in their group and have made it to the grand finals of eLigue 1. This qualifies them for the FC Pro World Championship 2026. HOWEVER they already qualified, so they didn't need this placement!

Paulo & Young played the ePremier League finals last weekend. They lost the semi-final and are not qualified to either EWC or eChampions League

League: The next split kicks off April 5th. In the mean time, check out this fun video of Josedodo answering questions from elderly fans.

Marvel Rivals: Ignite Americas Preseason started on March 27th and Liquid Citadel are currently topping their group 2-0.

MLBB: Both teams are currently undefeated in their respective regional leagues! Killer start for the 2-0 ID and 4-0 PH rosters.

Overwatch: We covered the big news up top. NA Stage 1 started and the team is currently 1-2. They beat Extension before losing to Dallas and Disguised. They'll need top 4 (of 6) to advance.

PUBG: Researching made me remember how confusing the PGS Circuit lan events are. So there is Stage 1, Stage 2, and Stage Final. Stage Final is kinda all that matters, but Stage 1 and 2 function as mini tournaments. The combined top 8 are seeded directly into the Stage Final Finals. And that is a lot of preamble just to say that Liquid will not be directly seeded into those Final Finals; because their Stage 1 placement was 21st and Stage 2… 22nd! That's out of 24 teams. If they want to finally make the Final Final, they'll have to finish top 8 (of 16) in the last chance bracket happening April 2-5.

Quake: I stan for Rapha and that will not be stopping any time soon. Yes there was a single Quake event. Yes, he beat Cypher 4:3 in the grand finals to win it. My GOAT.

Rainbow 6: The South American Kickoff league starts on the 31st! And I don't know when this publishes so I'll try and update it, maybe, probably. But R6 is back with a brand new roster as Team Liquid Alienware. This will be the first time, in a long time, that NESK will not be on the server wearing a TL jersey as he is now retired. We surprised him with messages from his family and friends. And yes, we made him cry. Sorry brother.

Smash: Hungrybox finished 3rd in Chicago at Out of the Blue 5. He lost to Wizzrobe's CFalcon - who would indeed go on to win the event.

Starcraft: Clem (3rd) eliminated Cute (4th) in a good ol fashion Team Liquid Team Kill (the TL-TK) at the WardiTV Winter Championship. In RSL Revival Season 4, Cure is the one faring better than Clem as Cure is still alive in the lower bracket of playoffs whereas Clem was eliminated in groups.

Trackmania: Epos qualified for EWC with his 4th place finish at Dreamhack Birmingham. Teammate Otaaq is still in the hunt as he placed down in 12th.

VALORANT: It was the very very beginning of the month. So long ago. Nats and the boys made it to Santiago for VCT Masters. They beat T1 in the opening round, which was cool because T1 did select us as opponents. However the run didn't continue after consecutive losses to Gentle Mates and NRG sent the boys packing back to their normal side of the Atlantic.

VALORANT Game Changers: Stage 1 has started and Daiki and the girls went 3-0 for a perfect swiss group stage. They'll be the top seed going into playoffs next week.

WoW: Race to World First is LIVE and if you're not watching…why? Because you don't like WoW? Well that might be a good excuse, sure. But maybe tune in anyways? Ya know for the vibes? Liquid Guild has achieved world first boss kills on boss #3-7. 8 and 9, forthcoming.

Marvel Rivals Apparel

Celebrating our entry into Marvel Rivals, we have a full collection of new items over at tl.gg/store. You'll find a Fantastic Four themed track jacket, four mousepads (including Jeff the Land Shark), Jeff Keycaps, and a handful of tees!

Thanks for taking a lil time out of your day to keep up with us. Let's chat on /r/teamliquid about what made you smile this month. Or, ya know, about what you would like to see from these newsletters. My inbox is also open via joey@teamliquid.com if ya wanna let me know what you think. Time to get back to raiding.