TACO to remain on sidelines for Major cycle: "My future is uncertain"

14/3/2023 - 23:04

The Brazilian already sat out 00NATION’s recent ESL Pro League group stage campaign.

Epitacio "⁠TACO⁠" de Melo has announced via Twitlonger that he will not be attending the BLAST.tv Paris Major Americas RMR, or the Major itself should 00NATION qualify. The news comes just after 00NATION made the playoffs of ESL Pro League with a stand-in.

TACO has been part of the 00NATION since July 2022, when he joined the squad as they revamped their lineup after consistent disappointing results culminated in a failure to qualify for the PGL Major Antwerp. The team experienced an uptick in results when TACO arrived as IGL alongside GODSENT teammates Bruno "⁠latto⁠" Rebelatto and Eduardo "⁠dumau⁠" Wolkmer, going on to eventually hit a peak of No. 12 in the world rankings.

It is not clear whether the Brazilian will return to 00NATION's active roster

The team has generally struggled to make waves at international LAN events, with that trend only changing with the latest ESL Pro League group stage, in which TACO did not take part. 00NATION fielded academy prospect Leonardo "⁠n9xtz⁠" Santos in his place and Marcelo "⁠coldzera⁠" David took over leadership duties, and with this lineup the team recovered from an 0-2 start to clinch a playoff berth, doing so with a nail-biting 2-1 series win over Ninjas in Pyjamas.

TACO did not give a clear reason for his stepping back in the statement, saying only "I'm taking care of myself, improving, learning, so I can direct not only my life to the right place, but any decision that I will have to take in the future regarding my career." When looking to his future he was equally vague, saying that it "is uncertain even to myself."

00NATION are expected to move forward with the following roster:

Marcelo "⁠coldzera⁠" David
Eduardo "⁠dumau⁠" Wolkmer
Bruno "⁠latto⁠" Rebelatto
Leonardo "⁠n9xtz⁠" Santos
Lucas "⁠nqz⁠" Soares

Olavo "⁠chucky⁠" Napoleão (coach)

Epitacio "⁠TACO⁠" de Melo (benched)

wtf

2023-03-14 23:06

just retire

6 replies

just stfu

2023-03-14 23:08

His hair might grow back when he retires.

2023-03-14 23:14

he should go to retirement home EG and get paid 30k per month salary

2023-03-14 23:16

3 replies

and there's a big chance that it is going to happen

2023-03-14 23:23

this is actually a pretty good thing to do, get some money to deal with retirement

2023-03-15 00:50

EG might release EG Gray since we already have black and white just to support more retirees, how nice of them

2023-03-15 17:17

FNX long gone, Fer dipped recently, Taco hinting towards it as well BR legends are going and gone.

30 replies

Fer was really good like top form ready for eu tier 1 cs all the other 4 fnx cold taco and fallen should retire

2023-03-14 23:09

14 replies

+1 imagine if fer went to a team like OG or fnatic

2023-03-14 23:24

fallen is so good

2023-03-14 23:31

I was really sad when fer retired, the guy was still a beast at his age but I guess he wants to be a Brazilian TV celebrity like fnx

2023-03-14 23:34

8 replies

2023-03-15 00:25

sadly +1

2023-03-15 00:46

It's not like he wants to be like FNX, I just dont think he enjoys the game anymore

2023-03-15 02:28

Fer on one of his recent lives he said he is not retired, he is taking a break, and he can comeback anytime.

2023-03-15 17:37

4 replies

even if he said that I'm 85% sure he won't. maybe he'll play in a t2 br team of his own founding or something, ain't no top team gonna want a 32 year old

2023-03-15 18:05

Liquid wanted him.

2023-03-16 15:41

2 replies

because he was good and performing, now he's on a break for who knows how long

2023-03-16 15:58

1 reply

Liquid wanted him when he was also over 2 years without playing. Fer is fer bro. He never performed bad.

2023-03-19 20:44

Wtf bro. Cold put up a great event on pro league and Fallen has been performing a lot in this season. You really dont know about CS (flag checks out)

2023-03-14 23:39

fnx retired in 2022,wake up

2023-03-15 06:37

Fer just wanne livings live

2023-03-15 18:09

Fer wasn’t dipped he decided to stop playing for personal reasons. He has shit tons of money and he’s an entrepreneur (which means his fortune isn’t decreasing), and he already won everything possible on CSGO. Just like fnx he can’t find motivation to grind and train to be at the top again. Would be nice to see him playing again on a tier 1 team, because he definitely still got it on him even to be a top 20 player if you ask me. But his heart isn’t on the game anymore

2023-03-14 23:33

Man, I really wish fnx still played. He's probably one of my favorite Brazilian CS players besides b1t.

2023-03-14 23:49

fnx is a fucking legend but he has motivation issues all th way back to 2017 m, let alone nowadays where he’s a reality show celebrity dating a Brazilian market top influencer

2023-03-15 00:00

7 replies

Yeah, that's his 1 downside...but at least he was able to enjoy his time as a CS pro. I hope there are other Brazilians who can carry the torch for the OGs and stay motivated. The scene feels kind of stale right now with both NA and SA teams being at an all time low. When SA teams, especially Brazilian teams, started moving to NA to places like Dallas / Houston, LA, and Miami, it helped to promote the NA T1 and T2 scene because they were being bested by "outsiders" (not meant to be used in a bad way).

2023-03-15 01:23

5 replies

I know, it was somewhat enjoyable that rivalry between NA x SA while it lasted. Unfortunately the top teams discovered that if they don’t played in Europe they wouldn’t win trophies, if you add Valorant in the mix you have the receipt that killed both scenes basically (Br still has fans + orgs, but the level is very low). Until there’s a way to fix this (starlink + servers in the middle of the ocean could be an option), I don’t know how to lower the gap between us and europe

2023-03-15 01:44

I'm not sure how "cost effective" it would be or any travel issues with certain laws / restrictions, but I think that alternating LAN events between the two continents would help a bit. Orgs and event organizers will also have to foster a growing Tier 1, 2, and 3 scene with "enough" online leagues in NA too to help bring back some competition. SA teams could move to NA for months at a time, or orgs and event organizers could also organize online leagues in the region too and host some LAN events to attract some local teams before attracting teams from other regions.

2023-03-15 05:05

Minimum latency between US and Germany: TL;DR don't expect a miracle, but about 30% of improvement. The speed of light in fiber is approximately 68.5% (with 1.46 refraction index for the fiber) of the speed of light in a vacuum, or about 205,337 km/s. To find the minimum theoretical latency, divide the distance by the speed of light in the fiber and multiply by 2 (for a round trip): Minimum latency (fiber) = (Distance / Speed of light in fiber) * 2 Minimum latency (fiber) =~ (6,500 km / 205,337 km/s) * 2 Minimum latency (fiber) =~ 0.0633 seconds (63.3 milliseconds) For Starlink: The speed of light in a vacuum is approximately 299,792 km/s. Although the Starlink satellites are in the Earth's atmosphere, we'll use the speed of light in a vacuum as an approximation, because the difference in speed is minimal. To find the minimum theoretical latency, divide the distance by the speed of light in a vacuum and multiply by 2 (for a round trip): Minimum latency (Starlink) = (Distance / Speed of light in vacuum) * 2 Minimum latency (Starlink) =~ (6,500 km / 299,792 km/s) * 2 Minimum latency (Starlink) =~ 0.0434 seconds (43.4 milliseconds) Please note that these calculations are based on the minimum theoretical latency for data to travel between the US and Germany. In practice, latency will be higher due to factors such as signal processing times, network congestion, satellite hops (in the case of Starlink), and equipment hops (in the case of fiber connections).

2023-03-15 14:49

A 60ms between America and Europe would be enough to make viable for teams to practice. If someone hosted a game server in Cape Verde would be possible to reach this goal with EU using cable and SA Starlink

2023-03-17 04:30

Starlink will never be a good enough technology to guarantee stable connections without issue. You need cable/fiber.

2023-03-17 23:54

just got cucked he should have stayed in top cs while he could, unfortunalely age got him harder than the other ex sk

2023-03-17 02:33

He dipped as in "saiu fora" or "vazou", not that someone made him quit or something

2023-03-14 23:52

there is sill one trophy left - Katowice one, he should comeback he was still a beast in imperial

True

2023-03-15 01:09

+1 well said. ya fer is my favourite player when i first started gaining interesting in watching pro cs and still is. Was fun cheering their little major run

2023-03-16 06:33

A small race that is among the biggest in csgo history. Pff

2023-03-19 16:56

LOL

good move tbh, cant have washed taco and wahsed cold on one team

2023-03-14 23:07

Take care legend Gl and hopefully see you soon

Taco to LOUD

they will become washed as Sentinels

2023-03-14 23:10

Faz o L

2023-03-15 00:21

legitimately he likely won't be good enough for LOUD gone are the days where a CS pro can just decide to switch.

2023-03-15 00:42

entry goat

bye

Valorant

2023-03-14 23:11

Cold kicked him live 🤣

2023-03-14 23:15

Cold the killer episody 5

2023-03-15 00:28

Taco should understand that for the sake of 00nation he should retire and never touch a keyboard again

Considering Taco has been the deadweight for awhile i'm not one bit surprised, Now 00Nation might win something

bad take, taco is latto and dumau's father

2023-03-14 23:25

2023-03-15 00:22

I dont read this coment .. lmao

2023-03-15 00:31

Now - coldzera + Taco and the team will be perfect

2023-03-14 23:17

what are u on taco cant igl

2023-03-14 23:41

Omg 🙄🙄🙄

2023-03-15 00:29

FINALLY

2023-03-14 23:20

just retire already

2023-03-14 23:28

Why he just shave already? It’s just embarassing at this point.

Lmao my boy coldzera was just waiting for the right reason to kick TACO 😂😂😂😂😂

2023-03-14 23:30

Truth kkkkk

2023-03-15 00:32

Fluxo - Wood7 + Taco Best move!

2023-03-14 23:50

-art/drop +taco It’ll work trust me

2023-03-15 00:03

taco isn't even tier 3 material imagine in furia a solid tier 2 team that wants to become tier 1

2023-03-15 13:25

Furia tier 2? wtf?

2023-03-18 16:10

tier 1 = top 10? they're top13 atm

2023-03-19 09:41

bot taco

2023-03-15 00:13

hes bad anyways. maybe he should coach so the pressure wont affect him that much :D

2023-03-15 00:18

Better than farT KEKW

kekw

2023-03-15 00:26

Kekw

2023-03-15 00:33

Better than art kekw youb know so much of cs hahaha

2023-03-15 18:11

I like and respect the bat but we noticed that it's time to let new talents join the team...

lost of motivation or another gf/IRL problem like device?

2023-03-15 00:30

Second option

2023-03-15 22:13

God forgive Taco doesnt

2023-03-15 00:55

Taco ;(

2023-03-15 01:13

The amount of disrespect in this thread man...

2023-03-15 01:31

No :(

2023-03-15 01:40

F Taquinho. You were the best, hope you get better

2023-03-15 02:12

taco just shave your head man it will look better

2023-03-15 02:24

Sounds like he finally realized he's getting bald

2023-03-15 04:01

Wish him luck, any time its a health issue I hope they get better

2023-03-15 05:13

I hope the chemo's working, he's completely bald now from all that stuff

2023-03-15 06:02

lol

2023-03-15 06:19

Take notes vitality. Sign jackz.

2023-03-15 06:33

extremelyWASHD

2023-03-15 07:11

why doesnt bro just shave his head....

2023-03-15 07:42

00nation looked better without him

2023-03-15 09:06

TOTALLY

2023-03-15 13:26

Bis Bald, Taco! (see you soon)

2023-03-15 09:13

hahahahaha

2023-03-15 10:26

god damn bro just join eternal fire and get a hair transplant

2023-03-15 11:10

10 replies

made me giggle to assume turks oftenly get bald

Nah they have really cheap transplants

2023-03-15 14:45

the suomalaista ylimielisyyttä right there (i like finnish tv shows so i learned some words)

that could be true, but #96 said what I meant lol, people often fly to Turkey to get cheap and apparently good hair transplants

2023-03-15 14:50

oh so he meant low price instead of low quality by using the word cheap from what you just said

2023-03-15 14:54

OH KKKKKK NOW I GET THE JOKE 8/8

2023-03-15 14:55

happens when you live in another continent, haven't been to turkey and I didn't know the details

2023-03-15 14:56

I haven't been there either, but I always just assumed that getting hair transplants in Turkey was a common meme. Maybe we just live in different "circles" on the Internet, I watch some Turkish content creators, so hair transplants get mentioned every now and then.

2023-03-15 14:58

yeah all i did around the internet in the last couple of years are things study/work/csgo related, maybe i'm the one to blame on this after googling twice I see that's a protuberant fact, my bad

2023-03-15 15:10