natu comments on NiP release

Three days ago NiP decided to cut all ties with coach Joona "⁠natu⁠" Leppänen, who has been with the team for four months, but couldn't make the difference, as NiP continued to struggle in important matches.

After letting a few days pass for the dust to settle, the Finn took to Facebook to give answers to a lot of questions surrounding his release from the team, such as why the move was made and issues the team had outside of the game.

He also shed some more light on the ESL One Cologne result, which came as a surprise to the team, given how well they were doing in practice beforehand, and the individual players' lack of confidence:

Looking back at my time with NiP:

As many of you know by now, I am no longer working for NiP as their CS:GO team coach. I decided to take a little bit of distance before posting my views and thoughts on the matter – let the dust settle first. Also I’ve been busy ever since returning from Cologne by working for PGL here in Bucharest, Romania. If you haven’t checked their stream yet I highly advice you to do so as they are setting the bar for production quality in many respects. These guys do an outstanding job because of how much they love Counter-Strike. I’m honored to be a part of their product.

First of all I want to emphasize the fact that I would take the same decision of joining NiP every single time, even though the time wasn’t as fruitful as I’d expect – it has taught me a lot and given me very much. The team has some of the greatest fans in the industry and it was a pleasure to get to see that first hand. The players are great people and I have made new friends I can share a beer with in any given occasion.

What took me by surprise was the fact that there were a lot of things outside the game that unfortunately had their toll on actual playing. Things I would have no control over and most of them things I don’t wish to elaborate more on. But what I can say is there were many psychologicly challenging issues. Players you have seen win it all and break records proving to be in a fragile state in terms of self confidence is not something you’d expect to be working with when talking about NiP. 

I think that could have been mostly salvageable if we would have simply decided to withdraw from competing for a while. But the enormous pressure of top tier online leagues running constantly and tournaments that we ”needed” to be at on the shoulders – we never took that decision, which I regret of not suggesting in retrospect. We wanted to take a more strategic approach to playing at a point during summer, but with constantly competing in online leagues – we never had the possibility of sitting down and simply grinding maps in and out – causing frustration as our online league campaigns weren’t going according to plan and players never got to be comfortable with that way of playing. This caused an effect of simplifying things and trying to put effort into tendencies and reactive play of how we proceed in any given situation. I don’t think that landed in their heads in the manner that it was supposed to – combined with lack of selfconfidence and quite frankly too many players having a challenging period in individual play caused an unfortunate spiral of bad results.

Going into ESL Cologne I personally felt good, everyone had some time off from the game and actually getting to spend quality time with their families. As many teams indicated, we were doing exceptionally well during practice – I even thought to myself at the time it went too well. We weren’t winning because we were ”scrimming” people and running around. We were winning because we were executing properly, we were reading the game properly, our instinctive plays were correct and individuals were playing a lot better than they had in a long time. To put it simply, we had all the ingredients to do very well at the event. Unfortunately the event went as it did, nothing like our expectations. I was mind blown with the fashion we performed there. There’s only one way of expressing what happened: We choked in the high pressure situation. Tunnel visioning and putting yourself in uncomfortable situations – not playing by your instincts is all it takes in top tier Counter-Strike to not play naturally.

What this team badly needed was a few big wins, get over that hump and feel confident and relaxed in those situations. We could have achieved that had we taken a break early in the summer and decided to focus in practicing instead of going to events and leagues, losing more games and losing more selfconfidence.

It was best for both parties that we went our separate ways. The team has a lot of questions to be asked going down the road and I won’t be taking stance on those matters out of respect toward them. With one thing coming to an end, new opportunities arise. I’m definitely staying in the industry and I have things on the works that I’ll be involved with – together with doing casting / analysing at tournaments aswell.

I do hope I have answered a few questions and given some insight to what these few months have been like. Again, I don’t regret anything and I truly loved my time with the boys and it was something I’ll be proud of having the opportunity to be a part of. Thanks goes to NiP Gaming as an organisation and all their sponsors – especially Xtrfy has my support smile emoticon

Best Regrads,

natu

Looking back at my time with NiP:

As many of you know by now, I am no longer working for NiP as their CS:GO team coach. I decided to take a little bit of distance before posting my views and thoughts on the matter – let the dust settle first. Also I’ve been busy ever since returning from Cologne by working for PGL here in Bucharest, Romania. If you haven’t checked their stream yet I highly advice you to do so as they are setting the bar for production quality in many respects. These guys do an outstanding job because of how much they love Counter-Strike. I’m honored to be a part of their product.

First of all I want to emphasize the fact that I would take the same decision of joining NiP every single time, even though the time wasn’t as fruitful as I’d expect – it has taught me a lot and given me very much. The team has some of the greatest fans in the industry and it was a pleasure to get to see that first hand. The players are great people and I have made new friends I can share a beer with in any given occasion.

What took me by surprise was the fact that there were a lot of things outside the game that unfortunately had their toll on actual playing. Things I would have no control over and most of them things I don’t wish to elaborate more on. But what I can say is there were many psychologicly challenging issues. Players you have seen win it all and break records proving to be in a fragile state in terms of self confidence is not something you’d expect to be working with when talking about NiP. 

I think that could have been mostly salvageable if we would have simply decided to withdraw from competing for a while. But the enormous pressure of top tier online leagues running constantly and tournaments that we ”needed” to be at on the shoulders – we never took that decision, which I regret of not suggesting in retrospect. We wanted to take a more strategic approach to playing at a point during summer, but with constantly competing in online leagues – we never had the possibility of sitting down and simply grinding maps in and out – causing frustration as our online league campaigns weren’t going according to plan and players never got to be comfortable with that way of playing. This caused an effect of simplifying things and trying to put effort into tendencies and reactive play of how we proceed in any given situation. I don’t think that landed in their heads in the manner that it was supposed to – combined with lack of selfconfidence and quite frankly too many players having a challenging period in individual play caused an unfortunate spiral of bad results.

Going into ESL Cologne I personally felt good, everyone had some time off from the game and actually getting to spend quality time with their families. As many teams indicated, we were doing exceptionally well during practice – I even thought to myself at the time it went too well. We weren’t winning because we were ”scrimming” people and running around. We were winning because we were executing properly, we were reading the game properly, our instinctive plays were correct and individuals were playing a lot better than they had in a long time. To put it simply, we had all the ingredients to do very well at the event. Unfortunately the event went as it did, nothing like our expectations. I was mind blown with the fashion we performed there. There’s only one way of expressing what happened: We choked in the high pressure situation. Tunnel visioning and putting yourself in uncomfortable situations – not playing by your instincts is all it takes in top tier Counter-Strike to not play naturally.

What this team badly needed was a few big wins, get over that hump and feel confident and relaxed in those situations. We could have achieved that had we taken a break early in the summer and decided to focus in practicing instead of going to events and leagues, losing more games and losing more selfconfidence.

It was best for both parties that we went our separate ways. The team has a lot of questions to be asked going down the road and I won’t be taking stance on those matters out of respect toward them. With one thing coming to an end, new opportunities arise. I’m definitely staying in the industry and I have things on the works that I’ll be involved with – together with doing casting / analysing at tournaments aswell.

I do hope I have answered a few questions and given some insight to what these few months have been like. Again, I don’t regret anything and I truly loved my time with the boys and it was something I’ll be proud of having the opportunity to be a part of. Thanks goes to NiP Gaming as an organisation and all their sponsors – especially Xtrfy has my support.

Best Regrads,

natu

You will be able to see natu during PGL's streams of the first season of their league, which has now hit the second European group.