Johnta: "The tactical aspect is on me"

The post-Minor break obviously suited HellRaisers as they went 2-0 up in Atlanta, cruising past MOUZ yesterday and edging out Ninjas in Pyjamas - one of the best teams at the qualifier - today.

Ivan "⁠Johnta⁠" Shevtsov, the coach of HellRaisers opened up on a lot of topics regarding his team and coaching, giving us some good insight in his team and his job.

Let's start with your role in the team, for example coming here to the Major Qualifier or specifically into the match against NiP, what do you do for the team?

I'm building a structure of our game, watching how our players can get better, trying to give some tips. Also, the tactical aspects are mostly on me, but we are working on a lot of ideas so if some players have some feelings about some move they tell me that and we try to build a tactic around it. ANGE1 also has a big impact on the tactical aspect, we are basically working together but mostly the structure of the game and the tactical aspect is on me.

About the NiP match, I tried to give the guys some more information about how they play, their playstyle, mostly in clutches. In total, they are a pretty good tactical and structured team, they know how to switch the tempo of the game, they know how to do heavy executes, how to clean out all the zones… We don't try to anti-strat, we play our game, do our moves, but we are trying to know about the opponents to know what to expect.

Talking about coaching - when I talked to STYKO he said that you and ANGE1 have good cohesion - what do you think was the key to that?

Actually a lot of people don't know this, but me and ANGE1 played together in 1.6, where I was a player and a captain and he was a young player. I was the in-game leader and doing all of the strategic elements. We feel each other and our vision of some aspects of the game are pretty similar. We talk about the game a lot, to be on the same page. Basically, when I came to HellRaisers I knew what he should change in his understanding of the game and how to make him play better. I feel he was doing a bit of different stuff from what he can do. And knowing which good sides he has and which bad sides we switched his role a bit. Now it's mostly good but there are still things that can be improved.

Also, with the coaching restrictions, when I joined HellRaisers I was in-game leading all the game. Now ANGE1 is doing it and he is doing pretty fine, I really like his style and I think the restriction has helped us in some way, we started to play a bit more aggressive in some moments because of his feeling of the moment. He has that feeling and I think it's really good.

The main thing with me and ANGE1 is that we know each other and our vision of the game is pretty similar.

Johnta feels that it's the coaches fault if the team can't adapt to certain plays

I don't know how much you know about other coaches, and in general, not much is known. You replaced lmbt who left for mousesports - can you compare your style to other coaches at all? Do you know what they do differently? What parts do you focus on and they don't or vice versa?

Unfortunately there is not much information on what exactly coaches do. Some teams use them only for analytics, some use coaches as in-game leaders, but after the restriction I think it's more like RobbaN and zonic that are giving advice on how things should be played. But after the restriction, the main thing coaches are working on is the preparation. I think the same - you should come to the tournament well prepared and if your team doesn't know how to react to some moves and doesn't have some moves that should be done it's the coach's fault that he didn't do it before the tournament. I don't know a lot about different coaches, I know a bit about Sergey, lmbt, I think he is also a good coach but mousesports need more time. They had a really tough schedule for fixing something and recently they changed a player, adding loWel.

HellRaisers changed a lot after they changed the coach but me and lmbt were playing together in 1.6 and we both have a lot of experience. It's just a different style that is in some way better for the players. So I guess it's the best to ask the players how they feel to see how different we are.

Moving to today's match, you had a 5-0 lead and then NiP started getting opening on the B site continually. Why do you think you were giving them so much opportunities on the B site, that seemed the biggest problem on your CT side?

We were leading after a bit lucky pistol round, DeadFox played amazingly. The next couple of rounds were pretty good, and then we had an entry in underpass, ANGE1 told DeadFox to go and peek underpass with the AWP because we knew they would not have money for the AWP. After that we decided to take water (B short) but we didn't have any info on it and they caught us on it.

After that they just changed the tempo on how they were taking water and we sometimes weren't expecting that. Also, on the A rounds we were a bit shaky and overstressed on the communication. That's why we missed some zones and missed some plays. That was the main problem of the CT side, we were 5-1 up and ended up 7-8, they won six rounds in a row, because we were over stressing and over thinking ourselves.

In the match we saw DeadFox have a great performance, up until now we didn't see him like a star, carry, but more of a utility AWP. How do you see him in the team?

I think DeadFox is still opening himself to HellRaisers, we are not that much used to each other. I think the best of DeadFox is that he is very flexible, he can play passive, utility AWP and also aggressive. In this match he was having some clutches, he saved the game for us with the 1v2 clutch, that was super important. All his kills are very confident, what I like about him is that he has not been stressed in a lot of moments, he just knows what to do to win the round and he tries his best.

Near the end of the match there was a technical issue that lasted 5-10 minutes, and after that you completed the comeback. Do you think that helped in getting the composure and getting the 15-15?

I think maybe it helped us a bit, so we could be calmer. Before that we called the timeout and I wanted to tell ANGE1 which calls are going to be good for the macro game, which tactics we should use for this round, and if we win for the next couple of rounds. I think it helped a bit but still we planned the timeout and after the timeout it would change in a good way. I saw what went wrong and I knew we could improve that after the timeout.

Talking about the pauses and the rules, what are your thoughts on the current status of coaches, do you think that the rules are good, do you think there should be any additional changes?

In the beginning, when the rule came out my reaction was negative. But now I think it's cool. There was an idea that there should be one timeout and that coaches could talk during freezetime. The way it's now I think it's really good. I thought it would kill the dynamics in some matches with eight timeouts available in the row, but it never happened, I've never seen it in a match. It's pretty cool you can add little things which you see from aside. Also, now I feel that as a coach I need to work and prepare more outside of the game, before the match doing my homework on the teams so I'm focusing more on that. We have ANGE1 who is focusing more on the in-game calls, so I think it's ok now.

Now with four pauses, what is your mindset like, when do you think you should call the pauses? When is it the most important to do that?

It depends mostly on the situation. If I see that we are missing something, it doesn't matter if it's a tactical aspect of the game or we are overstressed or overreacting to some move, even on the second round. It all depends on the team situation, if I feel that something is wrong, that we are not in a playing in a good way, I will call it. If I feel like we are having some small mistake or losing clutches there is no reason to do it. If you don't need to calm situation down and think about the game, there is no need to use it.

Lastly, you have 2-0 so that's pretty close to qualifying for the Major already, what are your thoughts looking forward?

We have 2-0 but every next game is going to be very hard. We are glad we beat NiP because they are maybe one of the hardest opponents for us. We were thinking, to qualify, we should be better than other eight teams and NiP would be in the upper part of that list. We beat them, and mousesports that are a really good team. We will probably face a team not as good as NiP, but still, it's the Major Qualifier and anything can happen. We will just focus on our game.

Professeur writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter.