“Your LEC Spring Split – the League of Legends European Championship – just ended with your first two wins of the season, when you were already eliminated. Do you feel like a mess?
It is obvious. For everyone: players, staff, management… there is a feeling of unfinished business, but also of failure, as that word should be used. It’s easy to get carried away with negative emotions these last few weeks, but I’m still happy with the last two performances. As soon as there are fewer points, there is less pressure on us and we play better League of Legends. There are obviously some adjustments to review, but I try to look at the positives. It’s still a long season.
How do you explain that you showed such a different face in your last two matches against opponents (SK Gaming and Team BDS) who were doing so well?
There are many reasons why we didn’t perform, especially in the second week. Pressure, of course, comes into play. But beyond that, we remain a team with diverse horizons, even in staff. So aligning ourselves, agreeing on what we should do together, what is good or bad action, how we align ourselves at the end of the game, was not that easy.
Everyone saw it a little bit: we tried to change direction in the middle of the split, tried to put a bow (Zhou Yang-bo) on carries, because he works very well in training and we want to see how he looks on stage. It’s a decision I don’t regret at all, but it results in structures that are very difficult. draft. The games where Bo Lilia and Brand played (vs. team traitors and rogues) Winnable but very difficult to play in an official match, as opponents make fewer mistakes than in training…
We finally realized that we didn’t need to go into that style, we started working again on what we lacked in the first week. This function was only seen in our last games. We were able to show by winning our games quickly that we know how to play when we have an advantage.
Did you sit down together to think and understand what went wrong?
We have not yet had this collective discussion after the elimination… I already have the answers, but we are going to have staff meetings, meetings to identify the exact reasons for this debacle. It’s also something I personally really enjoy doing, because it’s hard to be rational in these discussions.
You don’t give the impression of a team where the atmosphere is bad, regardless of the result. How does it work internally?
It’s tough to be 0-6, but we never lost faith in each other and that’s a quality, I internalized that. There was no crack. Everyone understood that we are all in trouble together and we have to get out of it. Showing personality in a team is very easy League of LegendsBut that was not the case.
The players know they can’t do that, because they have to plan for the year. The mental strength to be able to come on stage after losing seven games in a row and be able to give your all amazed me and bodes well for the future.
We have talked a lot about the lack of leadership in the team, both in staff and in the game. Is this an observation you share? Did you have trouble finding a common direction?
It is obvious. Because it’s a new group, you don’t know the internal dynamics. The question was to find your identity. When you accumulate defeats, after a while, you don’t know what works and what doesn’t… We told ourselves that our identity revolves around Bo, but until you win an official match, you Can’t validate it. And gained confidence from it.
As for internal communication, it has been messy from the beginning for several reasons. We may have given less space to people who needed to take more, which we corrected for example this week. It’s also a question of coordination: you have people who can give directions and others who don’t agree. It’s easy to say: “You have to follow this guy and that’s it,” From an outsider’s point of view. But above all, we must organize ourselves outside the game so that we all agree on what should be done in the game.
Our adaptation is not because someone took the lead, but because we understand each other better, the structure is better distributed, we leave more space for everyone and we are able to make decisions where everyone is the same. will go in the direction
Would it be easier to structure a conversation with a real choir leader? Probably, no doubt. But there are still things that we will continue to scratch for the future. »
