messioso: "RFRSH made the decision to enforce a change"

Following a series of disappointing results, GODSENT moved Alexander "⁠rdl⁠" Redl to assistant coach and brought in RFRSH's Graham "messioso" Pitt temporarily to prepare for the PGL Major Krakow Main Qualifier.

So far, the Swedes have won their first match versus Dignitas by the skin of their teeth with a 16-14 scoreline on Overpass and are waiting to see who their second match-up will be tomorrow.

messioso is aware of his limits as a coach

After their first match, we got a hold of the coach to find out more about his temporary transfer to GODSENT and what his role was in the past few weeks and at the Romanian event:

First things first, how did it come together that you would go on to coach GODSENT for a couple of weeks?

It came around very suddenly in regards to me being the coach, but the change itself was coming for a while. We had been analyzing their gameplay and results, talking to the players individually to gain a sense of their practice and the mood within the team. It became clear that things weren't working out so RFRSH made the decision to enforce a change upon the team. I was asked by RFRSH if I was comfortable to stand in as coach for this interim period and from what I had learned I definitely thought I could make a difference and improve things surrounding the team both in and out of game. It felt like they were lacking a lot of structure and discipline, and I think as the results started getting worse for them, maybe they started playing for themselves and not for the team as much.

RFRSH has a structured approach to how the teams operate that covers a variety of different factors that range from out of game things such as diet, exercise and their mental approach to the game, all the way to the in-game issues such as aim and tactical elements. You can see how this has worked with Astralis, who are much further down the lifecycle whereas GODSENT are just starting out. We recently started working with our own sports psychologist who will be joining us from tomorrow, he's working with multiple sports clubs in Denmark and from the few sessions we have had so far the outlook is very bright.

I am in charge and what I say goes, and I think the players actually appreciate that. The first two days, they were like "woah, this is a big change", but as it went on, about a week later, everyone thought "oh, this is actually going really well, we're getting better, we're enjoying it more because someone is telling us what to do, and someone's not letting us mess around during practice time" and stuff like that.

I know my limits as a coach, I'm not a former player, I don't know the little nuances and stuff like that, that's what the players are good for. They're all experienced players, you've got a three-time Major winner, two-time semi-finalists, another Major winner, they can handle that stuff. I help out with some tactical elements and especially a lot of research, scouting, analysing upcoming opponents, watching a lot of other games and trying to incorporate things into suggestions, but I do not set the strategies, I rely on pronax for that a lot.

What can you say to your qualifications to do this kind of work? I read that you had some coaching experience from sports, but in terms of CS it's quite a jump from refereeing and organizing over to coaching… How did your name come up, how did GODSENT get to know you had these qualifications?

I went to the ELEAGUE Major with GODSENT - not in an official capacity, but as a representative of RFRSH just to be with them, support them and stuff like that. When I was with them, you know, I talk about things, I had input, and I think that kind of interaction we had then made it so that they were comfortable with the change we made now. I think that they - certainly the three players from that roster - appreciated what I did for them there and they've taken to me now, so that's the main reason why they were happy with it.

As for my background in sports, I've done qualifications in American football coaching and soccer, both from kids' ages and adults, so I learnt a lot of man management and how to manage people directly. Obviously, my Counter-Strike experience mostly comes from admining, refereeing, but through that I spent probably more time around top-tier competition as anyone outside of the players and the talent, the broadcast. I've probably been to as many top-level events as anyone else in the last five years, so I've been around these players all the time, talking and listening to discussions, and you pick up quite a lot from that. It's limited, I accept that and I appreciate that, I know my limits and the players know my limits, and we meet halfway to make it work.

Speaking of the limits, what does your role look like here, is it more about analysing, scouting opponents and preparation, rather than giving input during matches?

There's a lot of scouting, I share a room with pronax and we go through a lot of stuff together. We work out our approximate veto and that will bring us to three maps we expect to go to, and Overpass today was one of them, so we were happy about that. It's actually pretty much exactly what we expected to happen, so we did our homework there, you could say.

Was there a point during the match against dignitas where you picked up on something and gave your input, seeing as it came down to the wire?

Yeah, certainly on the T side it was very obvious that we weren't pressuring the A site enough, we were letting fox run around the bathrooms and the long area, he was getting picks and we didn't shut him down enough. If we had done, we would've been able to take advantage of going towards A. As it was, we ended up using a lot of our B executes and making it work - it was scrappy and it shouldn't have been, which comes down to our lack of practice on Overpass. We expected to play it, but we didn't practice it, not to the extent we would have liked to going into our first match. We'll have to work on that a bit, but I think we'll be fine.

Other than that, there were times towards the end of the game when we were on 14 and we were losing rounds, but at no point did I feel like I had to step in, the communications were calm, they were focused, they were doing what they had to do.

Talking about communication, I imagine the team speaks Swedish amongst themselves as they normally do and switch to English whenever you're part of the conversation…?

Yeah, the team speaks entirely Swedish and, obviously, when they talk to me, they speak in English. I have to listen to Swedish and that's… the first day or two, they were interesting, learning the voices and the speed at which Counter-Strike is played, but once you've done it for three weeks in a row, you tune in and you can pick it up. Knowing where players are playing, knowing what they are calling, it makes a lot more sense to you.

Counter-Strike is Counter-Strike, people say footballers speak the language of football, they don't need to speak English together, because it's a language of its own. The basic callouts you can learn very quickly. Intricacies of tactics and stuff, yeah, I can't understand that, but I don't need to understand that. As long as I know what they've called in general, it's fine for me, I'm not struggling to work out what they've done or what they've called. It's working really well, actually.

You've mentioned not putting as much practice in Overpass as you'd have liked, what about overall preparation, do you as a team feel confident with what you've done in the past couple of weeks, ever since you came into the picture?

Yeah, we've definitely improved. We mostly focused on refining what we had and strengthening rather than changing too much. With the limited time we had, which was like three weeks, it didn't make sense to overhaul or make mass changes, so we just refined what we had and maybe changed like one or two roles on a map, but nothing too crazy.

Looking at the Main Qualifier teams, outside of the usual suspects, do you see anyone from the lower tiers that could be dangerous, be it from research or anything else, really?

I think the qualifier in general is going to be very close, I don't think there are going to be any teams that will get smashed out, and at the same time, I don't think anyone will cruise through. We already saw G2 as one of the best teams, Immortals were very close with them already, and I think other teams will be able to go very close with them. I do think G2 are the strongest team in this and I believe they'll get out, there's no question about that, but I wouldn't put it past us to beat them. I don't think any team in a best-of-one is that favoured against any other, because it all comes down to how you feel on the day, and every single game is on a separate day. If you wake up and have a good day, you can win a map in Counter-Strike, it's as simple as that. And that's the way we're taking this qualifier.