The last time I spoke with the Team Liquid Brazil VALORANT squad at the beginning of 2024, they were on their journey to the qualifiers of the country’s official Tier 2 league - VALORANT Challengers Brazil (VCB). Back then, I highlighted how well they’d done at the international Game Changers World Championship, too, having attained both a third place and a second place finish, along with a growing sense that if they kept pushing, the third time might really be the charm.

Well, as it turns out, it was.

After missing out on a spot in the World Championship in 2024, Team Liquid returned to the world stage this year with something different - the hunger was the same, but this time it was paired with a sharper conviction. And in Seoul, they finally lifted that long-awaited trophy, defeating long-standing rivals Shopify Rebellion Gold in a tense five-map series that mirrored their heartbreaking 2023 loss in their own home country. This time, the story flipped: 2-3 then, 3-2 now.

In some ways, it was an upset, but it wasn’t a surprise. Team Liquid remains the team to beat in Brazil, despite contenders like MIBR continuing to challenge them, And if you’ve already had third and second place finishes, the only way to go is up.

And, as expected, even now that they’re World Champions, they’re not satisfied. As Daiki and Joojina put it: “The chase isn't over yet.”

In the immediate aftermath of becoming champions, the players themselves still don’t feel like it.

“I don’t think it has sunk in yet... sometimes we talk in our group chat and tell each other it feels like a flashback,” said Joojina. “It was so fast, everything happened really fast, and I still don’t feel like a world champion.”

“I don’t feel like we suddenly stepped up or reached a place we were never supposed to reach,” Daiki added. “It’s actually the opposite - we reached a place where we’ve always known we were capable of being, and we’ve known that for a long time. So it hasn’t fully caught up with us that we won, but at the same time I know we’re where we were always supposed to be; a place we’re capable of being, where we should always be.

“We still have a lot to do, we have a lot of plans for the future, so it’s not like everything stopped for us.”

Where we always belonged

Two years of near-misses shaped this roster in a way no championship ever could. The sting of their 2023 final loss never faded away, especially for Joojina.

“Because we lost such close games, that final hurt me a lot - because it was that ‘almost,’” she said. “I used to say I would have preferred losing in a stomp than losing by being so close, because it felt like it was in our hands and it slipped away.”

This year, though, something shifted. After the heartbreak of 2024, the 2025 season forced the team to change their perspective. 

“We tested a lot of stuff,” said Joojina. “Ways of thinking in-game, how to handle situations, how we solve problems and receive feedback. I feel like this year we were open to doing that.”

A major part of that transformation came with the arrival of their new head coach, Napz. Building on the groundwork laid by Palestra, he brought a new structure - not a replacement, but a reframing - that gave the team the clarity they’d been missing.

“He really changed the way we see VALORANT,” Daiki explained. “We now have protocols that we apply regardless of map or comp; it's a foundation that allows us to do much more complex things, even when we're not great on a map. We understand each other better and know what each one will do at certain moments in the game.”

Another shake-up came with the departure of Bstrdd, who’d been a core part of the team since the beginning. A new player, Jelly, arrived to fill that role, and brought an important quality with her - the kind that wins you rounds you have no business winning.

“She plays even better when things are chaotic, and that's very different from the rest of us,” said Daiki. “So when a round gets messy or the situation is difficult, she knows how to find a really good solution. That difference, that communication, that dynamism helped us a lot and made my life as IGL much easier. And on defense, she has a lot of freedom to call rounds - especially when she has the Operator; she basically runs the defense. That helped me a ton.”

Between discipline, structure and, yes, sometimes chaos, they found a new kind of balance. 

“We’re a very mature team, and I don’t think a lack of maturity is why we lost in 2023, but I do think it was something that made us win this year,” said Daiki.

A new foundation

The first real test of that newfound maturity came at an earlier stage than the grand final. Their upper bracket semifinal series against G2 Gozen resulted in one of the most startling scorelines of the tournament: after Team Liquid stomped the opening map, they then lost 13-2 in Map 2.

“For me, that was the most challenging moment of the championship,” Daiki admitted. “That shocked me. During that game I felt like nothing we did worked, nothing we tried was effective. And that made me a bit anxious. ‘What if the next map is like that too?’”

The fear was real and familiar. 

“We had gone through that before,” Joojina said, recalling a similar collapse during Split 2 in Game Changers Brazil against MIBR. “We won the first map pretty convincingly, then we lost the second, the third, then the fourth, and we ended up losing the series. So when we lost the second map to G2, I remember thinking, ‘this can’t be the same, it can’t happen again.’ And the best part was realizing how much we matured during the year and that we were able to come back.”

Mental resilience

That newfound emotional regulation carried them all the way to the grand final via the upper bracket. By the time they stood across the stage from Shopify Rebellion Gold again, just days after sending them to the lower bracket, they knew they didn’t need a miracle - they just needed themselves.

“There wasn’t one defining phrase or anything like that before the final,” Joojina explained. “A lot of those moments happened throughout the year. When we got to the grand final, we were prepared, despite the natural nervousness, and everything was already in place.”

Shopify Rebellion Gold has been Team Liquid's narrative counterpart for three years - their ultimate rivals, the one team they could never beat. The ebb and flow between the two teams is a seemingly neverending one.

“I’m actually really honored that we have a rivalry with them,” Daiki said. “Outside the game, all of them inspire me a lot. They’re incredible players. I watched great matches from them in Challengers. They put themselves out there, they gave their best against men’s teams, they played really well. Being on the same level as them, beating them in the grand final, means a lot to me.”

For Joojina, the rivalry also gives her a sense of purpose.

“The best part of a championship is having someone you want to beat - who stands toe-to-toe with you,” she said. “We’re only where we are today because Shopify exists, because MIBR exists. Having someone who pushes you makes you better. I really wanted to be in that final with the [Team Liquid] girls. It was basically the same score, 3-2, except this time we won. For me, that [2023] wound is completely healed.”

The rivalry and the ten commandments

Despite the potential emotional baggage of facing Shopify in another international final, Team Liquid's psychologist and performance coach Natália mentioned that the familiarity of the matchup could be to the team’s advantage. But in truth, it wasn’t the defining factor.

“Honestly, I feel like at this world championship we didn’t quite care who we were playing against,” said Joojina. “We were so focused on ourselves - on the things we studied and learned - that no matter who came, we were going to play our game. This goes to what Daiki said about the protocols, our ‘ten commandments’ - they work on every map. No matter the team, those things always work. So even though it was a team we had already played against before, we were very confident and very calm.”

These commandments were less about strategy and more about identity.

“One of them, I think the most impactful one, is that (...) in a 5v5 you have total freedom - any of us - to take a 1v1 during the round,” explained Daiki. “Of course, if you see four people in front of you, you try to avoid it. But if you know it’s one person, and you can take that 1v1, you take it.

“Or if we know the other team’s default is 3-1-1, for example, then regardless of who it is - Joojina, Jelly, Isa, Bizerra - anyone can take the duel. Mainly: be brave. Don't chicken out. That's basically it.”

This philosophy was something that napz brought to the team, and in doing so, changed their entire approach. It also meant whoever their opponent in the grand final was never really mattered.

“I think it goes back to what Joojina said,” Daiki continued. “It didn’t matter who we were going to play. If it was Shopify, it was about revenge; if it was MIBR, it was about proving ourselves again. But while we were waiting for the opponent, it really could’ve been either one. We weren’t thinking too much about it.”

If the commandments set the tone inside the server, another ritual helped keep the team anchored throughout their bootcamp and the rest of the tournament. At the end of every single day, from the first day of bootcamp to the last day of the tournament, they filled Post-It notes with words that summarized the day’s highs, lows, lessons, and intentions.

“We did this from the very beginning of bootcamp until the last day of the tournament. Around 17 or 18 days,” Daiki said. “If we had a weird day with bad communication, we wrote ‘communication.’ We knew that was something we had to focus on the next day. If the individual level was bad, we wrote ‘individual.’ And the next day everyone focused on that.

“There was also ‘purpose.’ We had to put purpose into the things we were doing. (...) We had agreements with the team, so we had to go out with the team, we had to have our moments. We had to be focused. And it was an agreement we had with each other to make it work. (...) It made a big difference because at the end we could see everything that was bad at the start was good by the end.”

Rituals and discipline

At the forefront of all of that - the structure, the rituals, the balance between chaos and control - there is, of course, Daiki.

When she was 16, she wrote in her Twitch bio: “Hi, I'm Daiki, I'm 16 years old, and one of my biggest dreams is to be recognized for my in-game potential.” (Those words are still there to this day.) Today, after being crowned MVP of the Game Changers World Championship for the first time, her X (Twitter) bio reads: “10x 🏆 // WORLD CHAMPION.”

“I’m really proud of myself, especially looking back. I can remember exactly when I wrote that Twitch bio - I was trying to start streaming so people could get to know me, see that I could play, that I knew some things,” she said. “And then suddenly everything changed, and I won some titles, and now I’m a world champion. I can picture myself going back in time and admiring myself, you know? I think that’s the craziest part. And I’m fully aware that I followed a really good path: I made good friendships, I listened to the people around me. And for sure “mini Daiki” would be really proud - not just of the results, or the titles, or being a world champion, but of the entire process. I was very receptive, I was always there to learn. I’m much happier knowing that I didn’t lose my essence and that I’m still always trying to improve.”

Growth, leadership, and the future

I asked Daiki and Joojina to try and describe their journey this year with just one word. They came up with the same one: “Believe.”

“We talked about this with our psychologist - believing in every second, every round, every map, every series,” said Daiki. “That was it.”

That belief is what fuels the team as they reach for even greater heights. After all, they said it from the start: the chase isn’t over.

“Even though we won the championship, I don’t think we were a perfect team,” said Joojina. “We made a lot of mistakes. And I like that - I like that we have things to fix, things to improve. I like knowing we’re not at our peak yet. We reached the top of Game Changers, but that’s not the top of VALORANT. We want much more. We want Challengers. We want VCT. There’s still a long road ahead - and I think that’s the best part of this whole championship.”

“Winning the Game Changers World Championship was truly one of my dreams, one of my goals,” Daiki added. “But I have many others. As Joojina said, qualifying for Challengers and Ascension - those are goals I have. We still have a long road ahead. I want to show that we’re capable, because I know we’ve already shown that many times in scrims, in tournaments. It just hasn’t happened officially yet. We need to break that mental barrier - I really think it’s more mental than strategic or tactical. We’re capable of being on the same level as the men’s teams.”

It's clear there's a bigger stage calling to them. Ambition, though, doesn’t exist in isolation, and Daiki is quick to highlight something larger than their own climb: the future of the Brazilian Game Changers ecosystem they’ve been part of since the beginning.

“I was looking at Twitter recently and I noticed that a bunch of Game Changers orgs dropped their teams, and that made me really sad,” she said. “This was actually the best year Brazil has ever had in the inclusive scene. We have a lot of talent. You can build strong teams just with the players who are currently F/A. I wanted to point that out and also thank Team Liquid, who has been investing in the scene since 2022. Even when we lost last year, they didn’t stop supporting us or believing in us. It would've been very easy to drop us after losing Game Changers Brazil last year, but they didn’t. They stuck with us, they believed. And today we’re world champions. I’m very grateful to Team Liquid, and I hope other orgs can do what Liquid did for us.”

‍