Team Liquid’s professional CSGO team was originally formed in 2015 after the organization acquired the ex-Denial Counter-Strike: Global Offensive squad. Liquid’s early years were spent experimenting with a variety of rosters that included quality players like Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev and Spencer “Hiko” Martin, and eventually made a leap forward during the 2016 ESL One Cologne Major.
Team Liquid made history in Cologne, defeating Na`Vi and Fnatic to cement a spot in the grand finals of a Counter-Strike Major. With this, Team Liquid became the first American team to make it to the grand finals of a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major.
s1mple left the team immediately following the Major, and Team Liquid wouldn’t find that level of success again until the organization added ex-Luminosity and SK Gaming coach Wilton “zews” Prado in 2016.
After a group stage exit at the ELEAGUE Major: Atlanta 2017, the Team Liquid roster changed once again, adding Peter "stanislaw" Jarguz and Russel "Twistzz" Van Dulken as Hiko and Jacob “Pimp” Winneche left the team. Twistzz’s addition would prove invaluable as the team moved forward. It was then that the team started to consistently make their way out of groups and deeper into tournaments.
By 2018, Team Liquid was consistently finding success against top-tier opposition. The year started with the Team winning cs_summit 2, defeating the recent Major winners Cloud9 and a powerful SK Gaming side on their way to the trophy.
The cs_summit 2 win began a run of semifinal appearances. The first took place at StarSeries Season 4, which was followed by another at IEM Katowice 2018. 2018 also marked the beginning of a rivalry between Team Liquid and the Danish team Astralis. Astralis had Liquid’s number, defeating them in all six contests between the teams.
At the end of 2018, Team Liquid brought in Eric “adreN” Hoag and Jake “Stewie2K” Yip. The move was panned by some analysts, but proved the answer to Astralis at the iBUYPOWER Masters in January 2019, where Liquid defeated Astralis 2-1 in the Grand Final.
The win propelled Team Liquid on a run of eight tournament wins, starting at IEM Sydeny 2019 and ending with IEM Chicago and an IEM Grand Slam title. The team won the second season of the Intel Grand Slam in a record 63 days, easily topping Astralis’ record of 323 days.
Liquid’s impressive run of form petered out over the latter half of 2019. Their Astralis woes returned as the team lost all four of their matchups against the Danes after the StarLadder Berlin Major.
