North America's hopes at the
2026 Mid-Season Invitational Play-In stage endure. Despite being swept by reigning world champions
on day one,
quickly bounced back by dispatching Asia-Pacific's
in a dominant 3–0 series. With little time to celebrate, however, the LCS representatives must now turn their attention to an elimination match against
, where they will look to keep their tournament run alive and defend the honor of their home region.
Ahead of the highly anticipated North America vs. EMEA showdown, head coach
Jake "Spawn" Tiberi sat down with
Sheep Esports to discuss his coaching philosophy, the lessons learned from the first two days of competition, and what fans can expect from Team Liquid heading into day three.
You just won against DCG 3-0, perhaps a confidence booster after your first match? How are you feeling after the first two days of play?
Jake "Spawn" Tiberi: “Yeah, look, we're pretty happy. When we came in, we had some goals that we wanted to hit, specifically around accelerating the game. We saw some of those issues against T1. We went away, addressed them last night, and when we came in today, we played a lot more aggressively.
Game one, just because of the nature of the comp—we were playing Ornn—needed to be a little bit slower. We had to play around our cooldowns. But in games two and three, we kept the foot on the gas and were able to close them out quite nicely.
When you play against a team like DCG that goes at 1.1 combined kills per minute, it's always going to look a little bit ugly because that's just how they play. It’s bound to get a little bit muddy. But overall, we're happy with how the games went.
With so little time between matches, how do you review games and prepare as a coach?
Spawn: Honestly, we're like psychopaths [laughs]. We went back and scrimmed straight away last night., even if the guys were a little bit tired. We did a breakdown, I took some clips that I'd gathered throughout the day, we watched the most important things, and then got straight into scrims. I was just pushing the guys to really work on those issues.
Credit to LNG—they took a scrim on short notice, which was really nice of them. We were able to fix a couple of things we were looking at. It's not going to be perfect because, as you said, we're kind of building the boat while it's already in the ocean. We just have to keep doing what we're doing, continue to grow, and keep getting better.
How has scrim quality been at MSI considering your seeding? Have you been getting good opponents? What have you been learning from them?
Spawn: We're getting good enough scrims, so that's good for us. We're not getting the absolute best teams at the moment because I assume they're in transit or scrimming each other for the main stage. But we're still getting really good opponents.
Like I said, we've scrimmed a couple of LPL teams, and we also scrimmed FURIA, which was really good. I think they're a pretty good team. Across the board, we've had some good practice.
As for what we're getting out of it, honestly, right now it's less about what the other teams are doing and more about asking ourselves, "What the hell are we doing?" Why are we making the decisions we're making?
“We could scrim against cones right now and still fix some of our issues.”
We're trying to be really introspective and critical of ourselves. It's easy to come out of scrims saying, "FURIA did this," or "LNG did that," or "T1 did this on stage." But honestly, I'm looking at what we're doing—even when nobody is contesting us—and asking, "Why are we doing that?" So a lot of our focus is on ourselves right now.
Josedeodo was telling us about the ups and downs of Team Liquid. How do you, as a coach, fix those inconsistencies?
Spawn: It's actually a really unique problem to have as a coach.
Last time we spoke, in 2024, I had Impact (Jeong Eon-young), UmTi (Um Sung-hyeon), APA (Eain Stearns), Yeon (Sean Sung), and CoreJJ (Jo Yong-in). All five of those players really enjoyed having a system to play within, so it was easy to implement one.
Now we have a couple of really creative players. Josedeodo (Brandon Villegas) is very creative, and I think Quid (Lim Hyeon-seung) is as well. So we have to build a framework where everyone understands their role in the game, but without taking away what makes those players special.
When I watch the best teams in the world, that's what they've mastered over years of hard work. You look at the creativity T1 allows within its structure, or how G2 operates in Europe, and that's what we're trying to build.
“I'd actually say I did a bad job of that at the start of the year. I'm very structure-driven and rigid in my philosophy, so I probably overcoached the players. I actually think I made Quid look quite bad specifically.”
I've been trying to peel that back—not overcoach—but still make sure the players who need structure have it. At the same time, I'm trying to give Quid the right feedback so he knows when it's good to play aggressively and creatively, and when he just needs to be part of the bigger system.
Spawn: Absolutely.
If you look at my journey with Team Liquid, I was the Academy coach for three years. I brought Yeon and APA through that system into the LCS, so my transition from Team Liquid Academy to Team Liquid LCS was really smooth.
I also had a big advantage because I traveled with the team during Worlds 2023 as APA's positional coach, helping out with the Pyosik (Hong Chang-hyun) Summit (Park Woo-tae) roster. That made transitioning into that roster much easier, and then I brought in players I thought fit that roster better.
This time around, I'm building something completely new. That has been harder for me, I'm not going to lie. I think I've slowly gotten my shit together, which is good. I didn't do a good enough job at the start, but it's been really fun. It's challenging me in new and exciting ways, and I'm really enjoying that.
I'm just trying to stay positive, learn from my mistakes, keep putting the team first, and keep getting better.
After so many years in esports, how has your relationship with the scene evolved?
Spawn: I love it. Honestly, I think I'm the luckiest guy in the world.
I have two beautiful children who support me and even watch League of Legends. I've had times where my partner's been unwell, I've had the kids with me while remote coaching, and they're literally sitting on my knee while I do my job. Jenna, my partner, is so beautiful and supportive. She really holds down the fort whenever I'm away.
And honestly, I still love interacting with the fans. Call me crazy, but even yesterday some people were flaming me, some people were supporting me, and it's fun to have that connection. I can jump on Twitter, disagree with some people, get support from others.
There really isn't anything I'd rather be doing. I hope that passion comes through every time people see me.
“I'm not the perfect coach. I don't even pretend to be the best coach in the world. But I really do try my hardest.”
I give 110% to my team whenever I can, and I have a beautiful support system behind me that lets me do that. I'm just as in love with coaching and esports today as I've ever been. I hope I never have to make difficult choices about what that looks like in the future because I really am enjoying it.
What are your expectations for tomorrow's series against Karmine Corp?
Spawn: We really are expecting a close matchup. It won’t be a 3-0, don’t you worry. It will be a banger.
The last time we played KC at First Stand, it was a really fun series. They're an incredibly talented team with so much raw potential. I know Reapered (Bok Han-gyu) really well—I actually consider him a friend.
After we lost to T1, we were joking that they kind of aura-gapped us, and then I saw Busio (Alan Cwalina) say something similar happened to them today.
It should be a lot of fun. Yeon versus Caliste (Caliste Henry-Hennebert) is such a great matchup. NA and EU are lucky to get two young stars like that facing each other.
They've got an insanely passionate fanbase as well. We're going to give it everything we've got, hopefully get the 3-0 win, and keep building what can become a really fun international rivalry.
Spawn: Absolutely. kyeahoo looks really good, he's actually a player we had our eyes on during the offseason as well. Super talented.
Like I said, when you look at this KC lineup, they can beat you in every role. Canna (Kim Chang-dong) is great, kyeahoo has come over and not missed a step, obviously Caliste-Busio is a strong botlane, and Yike (Martin Sundelin) is a great jungler…
It's a really good roster from top to bottom. We've just got to do our job and go out there and play some good League of Legends.”
