“We hate the star-player mentality,” Sebastien Debs said in a frank and honest manner.
Debs is known fondly in the Dota community as “Ceb”, a back-to-back TI winner with the legendary OG team that defied all odds to gain success, thanks in large part to that side’s togetherness.
Now, working as a performance coach and advisor for OG’s new CSGO team, Ceb is looking to translate his recipe for success in Dota to five guys who he helped handpick to represent OG.
Anyone who is familiar with OG’s story and history would understand Ceb’s sentiment of not encouraging the “star-player mentality”, after all, the 27-year-old spent most of his Dota career moving from team to team without amounting to elite level success until he joined OG as a coach.
But how easy and realistic will it be to implement this ethos to a roster consisting of NBK, Aleksib, valde, ISSAA and mantuu?
In a process that bore a resemblance to assembling the Avengers, OG managed to put together a team consisting of five different players from five different countries with five very different personalities. And much like the Avengers, at times, OG have been plagued with communication and leadership issues, despite being very open with their struggles.
“We do have deep trust in one another,” NBK said after beating Evil Geniuses at BLAST Premier. “But sometimes, in specific situations — we have to make adjustments on the fly.
“There was one round where the clock was running low and everyone was under a lot of pressure and I made a call. It was counter-called, and we most likely would have won the round if we followed my lead but all those things come with experience, trusting that we can do the same things over and over again.”
Mantuu, one of the less experienced players on this OG roster, gave a deeper insight as to what the leadership issues have been like behind the scenes.
“Of course there are cultural differences,” mantuu said. “In our team we also had three in-game leaders that were put into this new team. Obviously we only want and need one IGL, there are advantages and disadvantages to our situation.
“The advantage is that we get a lot of ideas, after every game and every loss, everyone contributes new ideas, we help each other out that way. The disadvantage is that at first, there were almost too many ideas, people were getting confused in the game so we were just trying to put one person in the IGL spot.”
Ahead of BLAST Premier in London, OG also played in the ICE Challenge where they were knocked out in the quarterfinals after a poor performance against Mad Lions. Their lack of coherence showed, but BLAST, where they managed to beat Evil Geniuses twice to advance to the finals, seemed to tell a different story.
All five players are adamant that Aleksib is the IGL — a role that the former ENCE man strongly favours.
“I like to be the leader,” Aleksib said. “I like having the team respecting me, there’s no bad blood between us.
“I bring leadership within the game but outside the game I also like to think I’m a good guy in a sense that I can speak to everybody and I’m not ever going to be the guy who judges you or talks bad about you.
“Overall, I just like to be the nice guy in the game and to build relationships with the players if they like me back.”
Whatever the team say about Aleksib being their leader, they don’t always act like it. NBK has already complained about his calls not being acted on, and their coach Casper “ruggah” Due has his own take on how much of a challenge it is to manage a team of five players with different ideas.
“Yes, it’s a big challenge,” ruggah said after losing to G2 at BLAST. “From this tournament, I think it’s pretty clear that we’re still in the early stages of trying to get everyone on the same page.
“I’m just motivated to know that if this is how we perform when everyone is on the same page only 70, 80% of the times, how will it look when it’s on 100%?”
So, just how difficult is it to play on an international roster like the one OG have assembled?
Of course, different players will face different tests but the team, who have only been playing together for a little over two months, have created some tough circumstances for themselves.
For starters, communication will come as a natural issue when you have five players who speak five completely different languages. They have found a common ground in being able to communicate through English, but not all the players speak it to the same level. “It would not be out the question for miscommunication to happen both in and out of the game.
Valde, who joined OG because he wasn’t feeling motivated to play in his former team North anymore, has only ever played in the Danish scene. He has the luxury of having a Danish coach but the transition to a roster consisting of Polish, French, Jordanian and Finnish players is not easy.
“I’ve been playing in the Danish scene my whole life,” Valde said. “So obviously it’s quite a change having to speak English all the time.
“The language barrier isn’t too bad to be fair but coming from different teams and different countries means you have a different way of doing things and different ways of speaking, team talks and all that. It’s not easy but I like a challenge.”
The team also seems to have a difficulty keeping themselves loose and relaxed. It is not uncommon for CSGO players to be hyped up and energetic during matches or between rounds, but at what point does being too emotional become a detriment to the team?
Imapet, the coach of Evil Geniuses who fell to OG twice at BLAST, is highly complementary of the team but name dropped ISSAA, one of the players who admits to being emotional, as one of the weakest links.
“I think they’re going to be a top five team as long as they stick together and don’t have any leadership issues which I think they resolved already,” Imapet said. “So, as long as they stick together, keep being on form and ISSAA is going to play better, then they could be top five for sure.”
ISSAA’s response to Imapet’s comment was simple.
“I’ll do my best.” ISSAA said plainly, “I can’t see how others see me but all I can say is that I’m trying to do my best for the team and sacrificing myself for whatever they need.
“I’m an emotional guy so things can go really well or things can go really bad for me. But it helps me and it helps my team as well to be hyped up — it feels great to show some passion.”
The team as a whole have also identified their lack of control over their own energy as something that needs to be worked on.
“We’ve been noticing especially in the ICE challenge that the energy levels are high,” mantuu said. “We get really hyped and really excited but we can’t relax and chill going into the next rounds.
“We’re just trying to control it and keep cool — obviously we have ISSAA who is always really hyped and high energy so we’re working on how to get to the right level.
Valde, mantuu and ISSAA were all personally recruited by NBK and Aleksib who were the crucial decision makers during the early days of forming OG.
Both NBK and Aleksib have said that they joined OG so they could play with each other. NBK admired what Aleksib did with ENCE and liked his ideas while Aleksib wanted to be around someone who knew what was needed to build a successful team and achieve results.
There’s a lot of advantages of having two players with these attributes on a team but contrary to what Ceb managed to implement with OG in Dota, these two are very much star players.
Both of them play very different roles, but there are bound to be crossovers with two big personalities. NBK, for example, admits that he likes to be hands on in situations and believes it’s a huge value that he brings to the roster.
“I bring experience to the team,” NBK said. “Experience doesn’t exactly cover specific things but it helps you to know whether you’re right or wrong and what to work on.
“There are a lot of things I’ve learnt from all the teams I’ve been in that you cannot just naturally know. When I approach a team or roster I want perfection — my expectations with myself is something I want to also give to the team to some degree where I’m not just going to sit back and hope a problem is going to be solved.
“I’m going to take this matter into my own hands even if it’s not my problem at all. If one player has a problem with another player, I’d come in the middle and make things work. By experience, I naturally know a lot of solutions to these problems whether it’s in the game or out of the game.
“In the game, I also have a lot of input with Aleksib, to help him model the game plan he wants to put together. Simplicity is key because we’re on an international roster and you’re going to complicate things if you talk too much. People tend to get confused and lost which means you cannot really play your game to the best of your abilities.”
Indeed, no one can dispute the value of the experience NBK brings to this roster but have OG given themselves too many things to worry about? How can they focus on performance when they have to deal with communication and leadership issues as well as learning on how to take each other’s ideas?
Ceb seems to have the answer to this one.
“I look at it as being a high risk, high reward kind of situation,” he said. “Or put it this way, it can be very detrimental but if you handle it properly, it becomes like an infinite source of inspiration and resources.
“Being able to manage different cultures, different personalities, different experiences means there will always be a way to bounce back from any situation or to make the most out of the challenges the team would have to face.
“In that sense, I feel like it’s a blessing to be able to work with a group that’s so diverse. Of course, you have to handle this properly because if you don’t, it ends up with people confronting without really listening to each other and whatnot.
“I’ve seen dynamics within international groups that was really hurtful earlier in my career. What we’re building here is the complete opposite — really taking advantage of the situation. To be fair, I’m not saying I don’t believe in national teams, I think they can also be successful but I don’t see a reason for this not to work.”
Ceb travelled with the team to London and watched from the crowds as OG beat Evil Geniuses and took a Map off of G2, using his spare time in between to talk and motivate the players who flocked to him as they came off stage.
It’s clear that he has taken on a very ambitious and difficult challenge but this is the man who managed to build a Dota roster with much less resources and talent. Even with the set of circumstances the CS team find themselves in, they still managed to qualify for the BLAST finals after some impressive performances.
It is unclear whether OG’s Dota ethos will be able to translate into this CS roster, but Ceb wants to make sure that everyone appreciates this team for who they are, their own brand.
“Hopefully they will write their own history and build their own legacy,” he said. “OG will become what they will make OG in CS.
“What fans can expect is the spirit and philosophy that lives within OG. The reason why that group of players represent OG is because they fit our mentality and respecting each other and wanting to build something.
“When it comes to how they’re going to develop their CS journey, it’s completely their own. OG will become whatever they want to become.”
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