Shakezullah: "If you miss your window to qualify for EPL or Flashpoint at this level, your team can blow up just like that"

We spoke to Triumph in-game leader Alan "⁠Shakezullah⁠" Hardeman about his time coaching Chaos, in-game leading in North America, and preparing to take on the likes of Liquid and Evil Geniuses in ESL One: Road to Rio.

The North American team have found recent success in online tournaments, claiming a top-two placement in ESEA MDL Season 33 to assure themselves of a shot at a spot in ESL Pro League S12, while also qualifying for the Americas Minor. But with the MDL Global Challenge now postponed and Valve revamping the qualification process for the Major, Triumph are instead left preparing to take on an elevated level of competition in ESL One: Road to Rio, all while needing to rebuild their roster following the transfer of Logan "⁠Voltage⁠" Long to Chaos and the release of 16-year-old Peter "⁠Asuna⁠" Mazuryk.

In this interview, Shakezullah discussed his thoughts on facing a higher caliber of opponents in the Road to Rio tournament, what he picked up from his time on Chaos, and playing alongside multiple rising North American talents, both in the past and on his current team.

Voltage was chosen to stand in for Chaos in place of smooya, and has now become a permanent fixture on their roster following smooya's release. You’ve also chosen to remove Asuna, leaving you with two spots on your roster — how do you approach rebuilding your team from here?

When Voltage was bought out by Chaos, we figured that, since we were starting over, we might as well just press the reset button on everything. We analyzed what we thought would be the best decisions long term, and made the roster moves to remove and bring in certain players we felt would best help us achieve that goal.

With Valve making changes to the qualification process for the Major and you now facing the prospect of taking on the likes of Liquid and Evil Geniuses in the upcoming Road to Rio tournament, how do you prepare against that level of competition while simultaneously needing to bring on new players?

We are focused more on developing our game and our system than on the teams we will be playing. While we will do some prep work, the best thing we can do for our team is to focus on ourselves. Anti-stratting opponents is not a consistent win condition, nor is it healthy for your team to learn and become better. It provides its advantages for sure, but if we solely focus on anti-stratting opponents during the tournament, we will just have our own holes that they will naturally abuse.

While it is tough to cover so much in a little amount of time, we are going to do what we feel comfortable with and play our game. If we have a solid system and all the players are performing well in it, the results will come naturally and we won’t have to worry about doing heavy prep work to beat opponents.

You had a five-month long coaching stint on Chaos before you returned to playing. Can you speak to your time on that team and what working with steel was like?

It was nice because I got a legitimate chance to test out coaching and see if it was something I’d be interested in doing in the future. I have a ton to improve on when it comes to being a coach within a team, but I was grateful for the experience and I’ll carry what I learned into future teams if I go back into that field.

It was unfortunate that I was not able to move out to Arizona to be with the team, but mCe is a great coach and he is doing awesome things over there. I’m happy for him and think it worked out well for both parties. I’m enjoying playing again and believe I still have a good amount to bring to the table as an IGL.

As for working with steel, it was a unique experience because not many people get the chance to learn from a well-decorated IGL such as him. While I brought stuff to the table, he taught me a ton about the game, especially outside of scrims. It made me more well rounded as a leader and caller in many aspects of the game, as well as improved my ability to really set up a team for success long-term. I am applying a lot of what I learned in my time on Chaos with Triumph.

You’ve been a part of teams with their fair share of upcoming North American talents, playing with floppy and oSee on Singularity, coaching Infinite, and recently with Asuna and Grim on Triumph. Can you explain what it’s like playing alongside new talents and what they bring to the table, as well as any issues you may have noticed?

Playing with floppy and oSee was awesome because I got to experience first hand their desire to reach the next level. I love both of them and I’m not surprised to see them succeeding and growing every day on Cloud9. floppy has the best work ethic I have ever seen, and I think oSee has the highest skill ceiling of anyone I’ve played with. It would not surprise me if they are the next big talents to get a chance on EG or Liquid.

New talents are always a gamble because at this level, it’s up to you to decide if you want to improve. Raw skill can only take you so far, you need to start doing more than just playing practices, which isn’t always easy for people to get accustomed to. A lot of the work — demo review, practicing grenades, or theorycrafting — can be a bit boring or grindy at times, but if you can learn to do it and incorporate it into your routine, you will see massive growth in your individual play. You can give each player on your team the tools to improve, but at the end of the day they have to be motivated to do it themselves.

In a recent Tweet, you said you became complacent towards the end of your time on Singularity and became “the player you promised yourself you would never be”. Can you expand on that a little bit?

I simply didn’t put in the effort required to reach the next level and I let my teammates down in the process. I am happy that they're all in a better place now, with all four of them playing professionally, but that’s not justification for me not stepping up. We had moved into a house and beenin a position to grind and become the best version of ourselves.

When you are striving to become a pro, doing what is expected or required is simply not good enough. You have to go above and beyond each and every day, putting in more work than those also trying to climb up. I allowed myself, as well as the team, to get into a phase where each day we were not improving, we were simply playing and doing what was necessary. I didn’t watch enough demos outside of practice, I didn’t play enough outside of practice, and I didn’t demand enough from our team inside and outside of the game.

As a leader and IGL of a team, you are the one who has the most impact on what the team will become. If you allow your team to slack off, they will slack off. If you don’t require their best every day, they will not give it. However, if you demand excellence each and every day, your team will continue to get better and you will improve. I became a player who just put in the bare minimum and stopped doing all the things that had allowed me to rise to the position I was in. That’s what I mean when I say I became the player I promised myself I’d never be.

You’ve previously spoken about issues with ego and mentality in North America. Is that something that you feel is still prevalent in the scene, and if so, how can that be tackled?

I can’t speak on that for the top teams in North America since I have little first-hand experience with them, but I’d say most of that rant came from when I was rising up within the scene and my experience in things such as Rank G and FPL-C. A good chunk of people in those hubs, as well as the leagues that correlate with that skill group, are filled with people who have little vision about the future and only about being better than the person next to them. It breeds the wrong mentality and teaches terrible character traits that hold you back as a human and player. That’s why when you look at the up-and-coming talent in NA, whether it be people trying to make pro or MDL, it’s such a worry about the kind of player you are getting.

I still think it is very prevalent in the scene and that it is mostly cultural. Many young people lack maturity and don’t have the ability to sacrifice for things greater than themselves. That’s why stats are such a huge thing in North America, because it is primarily what is used to determine your value as a player. They don’t take the time to study and look at people to see who is the best fit, which means individuals focus on getting [good] stats instead of becoming better players.

In what I’ve experienced with the top level of MDL/bottom level of pro, there is still a fair share of people like this, but it is more stable. Many players are familiar with each other and know what to expect from individuals, play-wise but also personality-wise.

At the end of the day, if you are not a consistent top team who is attending and placing well at events, you definitely have no right to have any form of ego. I’ve qualified for the NA Minor and other LANs, but to someone like s1mple or device, that's nothing. They don’t even know who I am, so what gives me the right to sit here and think I am something special?

I recently talked to FNS about in-game leaders both in general and in North America, going over some of the issues that you deal with when it comes to being removed from teams and building rosters. What has your own experience been like as far as being an up-and-coming IGL in NA?

The hardest challenge is figuring out the game all by yourself. I never really had anyone that could sit me down and show me revolutionary new things at a top level apart from steel.

Roster stability is also a huge thing in NA. If you miss your window to qualify for EPL or Flashpoint, that might be the end of your team or roster. If we had qualified for EPL with Singularity, odds are our team would have stayed intact. However, since we failed, our team fell apart and everyone else sought new offers. Again, I made mistakes and I’m not saying those players didn’t have the right to look at other things, but if you miss your window at this level, your team can blow up just like that. With teams who are in EPL or Flashpoint, they have roster stability and usually a huge organisational backing. You have to constantly fight to prevent your players from being poached because if you miss that window that comes around every few months to qualify for EPL or Flashpoint, you are essentially starting over from scratch with what remains.

As for what FNS said, I think it’s a fair point. At a certain point, you have nothing left to teach the players on a server. It is up to them, as well as yourself, to continue to improve and learn new things for the betterment of everyone. Players can get frustrated with that barrier and many think it’s easier to replace someone, especially a leader, to fast-track the process, but it ends up backfiring. Sometimes, players are not ready for the new step, or the new leader everyone thought was going to be so impactful lacks many of the things that had made your previous leader successful. While I don’t have much experience with this, I’ve seen it happen with numerous leaders, as well as players within the scene.

People also talk about how North America has no IGLs. The truth is, becoming one doesn’t really provide an amazing path to being a pro. No team in EPL or Flashpoint honestly wants to give an up-and-coming IGL a shot because it's hard to bet your future as a team and organization on an unproven caller. As I alluded to earlier, the IGL is responsible for much of a team's success, so when you bring in an up-and-coming IGL, you are not certain if they actually have what it takes to lead the team to a better place. It’s much easier to have a team take a chance on an individual, as you’ve seen with players like s0m and oBo. I’m not discrediting their skill or if they deserve the shot they’ve earned, but I see that as the best way to make it as a player as opposed to picking the IGL route.

Recently during a post-match interview for Flashpoint, FalleN praised you as an in-game leader, saying he was impressed by your calls when playing against Triumph in practice. As the leader of a rising team, what do you think differentiates you from other in-game leaders in North America who are in a similar situation, and what does that sort of praise mean to you on a personal level?

I’ve tried to shift my style recently from one that relies on heavy strats to one that builds smarter players. This relies on players to put in extra work to learn their spot more in depth, but the rewards are that you are much less readable and rounds develop more naturally. Instead of players feeling like they need to wait for a certain call from me to come out, they can do things that make sense in their position and the round comes together from there. I don’t have to focus on a lot of the small details, because players are already handling them and working out their own small teamplay situations on their own. It’s allowed me to focus more on my game, while allowing our general presence around the map to be consistent.

I think a lot of teams coming up focus more on set strategies, when in reality your style needs to be more loose. Focusing on why you are reacting a certain way and understanding why you are making a certain play is much more beneficial than understanding what to do based on some pre-established protocol. That might work 80% of the time, but you need to be able to understand when that 20% comes into play and make real-time decisions on your own.

Hearing praise from a legend like FalleN is obviously an honor. He was winning Majors when I was starting my first team in Open so it’s surreal to hear good things from him. For me, it re-enforces this new calling style that I’ve shifted to and generally what I’m doing in the server. As I’ve talked about in general, I’ve spent a long time trying to figure out the game personally, and now with extra knowledge from my time with steel, it appears that it’s coming together. I just have to keep doing what I’m doing, and hopefully, with time, the results will come.