steel: "Eventually it's going to go down the path of me developing players"

Joshua "⁠steel⁠" Nissan sat down with HLTV.org after Ghost was knocked out of ESL One Belo Horizonte in the group stage to talk about his new team and his thoughts on his past, present, and future.

Ghost came to Belo Horizonte as the underdog and had to face two of the world's best teams, FaZe and SK, in the group stage. Without much time to prepare, the North American team lost against both in matches with one-sided results on the scoreboard, giving them a lot of material to take home and learn from.

The ten minute interview with the Canadian player starts off with Ghost's coming together and some of the changes from Torqued as well as what their preparation ahead of ESL One Belo Horizonte was like, and is followed by some of steel's past, present, and hopes for the future, including making a winning team.

You come here with a pretty brand new team, as you officialized the roster just a few days ago, but I imagine you practiced a little bit before. How did you prepare for this event as the team came together?

We had about two weeks in which we could actually get together and practice. I think it may have been almost two and a half weeks. The first larger part of that was used to develop the fundamentals and the basics. The groundwork for everything. We were playing to make sure we were killing all of our setups and basic set-strats and things like that so we could say, "ok, we have this foundation and now we can play a bit looser."

After that first week of laying the groundwork and starting to play a little bit looser, we were playing practice games to try to win and learn how to adapt. To play loose and be able to pass information back-and-forth to everyone, to say, "this is what they're doing here, we can do this tactic. We can do a B execute now," and stuff like that. That's how we separated the practice. The plan was to go about it that way so we would be the most prepared for this event in the short period of time we had. Obviously, it's not the best way to go about it in the long term. I'm hoping now that we can have more time at home and bootcamping so that we can actually do it in the proper order so that we can have better success.

How much has the team changed from Torqued to Ghost? You still have the core, but what are the biggest changes?

I guess the biggest changes would be that our primary AWPer is Wardell and not koosta, who has now taken one of the rifle roles. He's doing a lot of the stuff swag was doing, but koosta is doing it in a way in which he's a lot more aggressive and does a lot of really good plays to create space and opportunity for us, be it by getting a kill, causing a distraction, or something along those lines which allows us to do a lot. He also plays bombsites alone for us. We have confidence leaving him alone and we know he's going to make the right decisions, make the right plays, get enough kills if he's alone. If five guys are coming at him and he's alone, that he'll get two at least. I'm very confident in his ability. I think that was the biggest change, having him move from primary AWP to that rifle position. I think he has owned that.

The rest of the changes would have to do with having Subroza and Wardell join, who are less familiar with my calling style, and who are less experienced players in general. I think this is Wardell's first big event, or at least his first tournament with Tier 1 teams. I think Subroza played at a couple tournaments with CLG in the past, but I don't know how many events he's been to, how comfortable he is against big teams... I think once we get to be more familiar with one another we'll be able to fix whatever issues come from creating a new team.

You mentioned koosta taking over swag's role. Did you find it kind of disappointing, perhaps in a bit of a romantic way, when the ex-iBP core disbanded, or was it just bound to happen?

Well, before we got banned we were already set on parting ways with one another. I wanted to leave iBP, they wanted to cut me... it was like a 50/50 type of thing. When we got unbanned we weren't even each other's first choices. After a disappointing MDL season we were, like, "OK, you guys need an IGL and I need players that want to actually play and win and put in the time and effort, and who also have the skill." We played together for a season, but there was a disconnect between what we wanted and what we were willing to do. We had different in-game and out-of-game philosophies and it just didn't work out so we went our separate ways again and that lead me to the current situation with Ghost.

So let's quickly touch on the ban, it was a big halt to your progression. Before that, you were playing Majors and so on, and now it feels a bit like you have to start all over again. Or perhaps not start all over, but you have a big handicap. What do you think it'll take to get back to the top?

I think the biggest difference is that before I got banned, even though I wasn't at my best I was playing with players that were, and their best was better than anyone else on the continent. I think now, the biggest change is that even if I can get to my best, I'm still doing it with newer or less experienced players, so it's going to be a work up. All of the players at the top of the scene, like Liquid or NRG or C9 in terms of North American teams, they wouldn't want to play with me because they have all these opportunities to play at Majors or ECS, whereas younger or less experienced teams may not have the chance to play at Majors because they wouldn't be able to qualify.

If younger players are able to play with me, maybe they are able to learn something and then in a year or two from now, or three or however long they want, they can learn whatever they want from me and if they do want to go down the route of "I want to compete at a Major and I think I have the experience and the skill and I've learned a lot from steel", then I'd be happy for them to go and move on. It's not like I want everyone to be stuck with me for the rest of their lives, but at the same time, I know that eventually, it's going to go down the path of me developing players as opposed to being one of the biggest champions around the world.

Well this is also a very important role, right? It's like HUNDEN, for example, in Denmark. He's an IGL that brought up a lot of players that are now enjoying a lot of success. Is that something a figure you'd want to be? A sort of mentor that can create champions?

It's not my main focus. I think my main focus is to be able to compete, travel, perform well, and be able to be one of the top teams in the world, but I do think that a part of that is also developing players. It's not like I'm just sitting here being someone who can be happy going to tournaments every now and then, just playing with players and trying to teach them stuff. I want to be a champion, and I want them to be champions with me, and then if they want to be champions without me, then all the power to them.

You had a pretty expected short run in Belo Horizonte considering what we've already covered in the first questions. What do you think are going to be the key takeaways from the event for you guys?

I think the main takeaways are going to come when we go back and actually review the games. We'll see that first of all the scoreline doesn't really reflect how good or bad we actually performed because if you look at like 16-4 or 16-6 or 16-8, you might think, "wow, these guys just got absolutely destroyed," but against FaZe... they won at least five situations which were at least 5vs3 or 5vs2 in our favor. Situations in which we made poor decisions, individually. When we didn't throw a smoke in a certain area and GuardiaN got an AWP kill, or when we didn't watch our flank and karrigan got a flank on us. Simple things like these where we just have to be a lot better at making the decisions of where we should be, what we should be looking at, where we should be using our smokes, etc.

I can do a bit better of a job as an in-game leader, making sure we're regrouping and a bit closer together so that if we have a 5vs3 we can get the trade, so that even if GuardiaN wants to pick one of us off we can kill him right back and instead of it being GuardiaN bringing it from a 5vs3 to a 4vs3, we make it a 4vs2, a situation in which we still have the two-man advantage.

I think once we're able to review that and see where we broke down in these situations, we'll do a lot better. The same thing as against SK. I was looking at the graph and every round we lost it was two alive, two alive, one alive, two alive, two alive... When it comes down to these situations in which we're losing 3vs1s, 2vs2s, or 3vs3s... at that point, as an in-game leader, I do a lot to get to those situations. Now it's the job of everyone—myself included—to kind of put in the work to close out those rounds, to stay more composed, do a better job of calling for smaller plays between one another and just being able to play the post-plans and clutch situations a lot better.