ruggah: "mantuu is a super good player, but we wanted to try a different type of AWPer"

OG's coach explains why the team decided to bring in Abdul "⁠degster⁠" Gasanov for Mateusz "⁠mantuu⁠" Wilczewski and how having a more aggressive AWPer has changed the team's dynamic.

Jumping ahead of most teams with an early change, OG decided to bring in degster just before the summer off-season started, having just seen how impactful the aggressive AWPer can be for them when he stood in during their run to the semi-finals at BLAST Premier Spring Finals in Lisbon.

According to Nemanja "⁠nexa⁠" Isaković, the addition of the Russian has brought with it some challenges with fitting aggressive pieces together in OG, and HLTV caught up with the team's coach, Casper "⁠ruggah⁠" Due, to get his point of view on how the team has dealt with the changes in the dynamic as well.

The Dane spoke about what the motivation behind bringing in a more aggressive AWPer was in the first place and responded to mantuu's interview with Dexerto, in which he shared his disappointment with never having been asked to take on a more active role before OG made the lineup change.

ruggah delved into OG's run so far at the BLAST Premier Fall Groups, as well, after the team struggled in the first phase with losses to Vitality and Astralis and survived the elimination match against Vitality a few days later.

It was a rough start for you at BLAST in the first stage. Can you tell me about what issues you had getting into the new season in shape?

I think our main problem on the first day was energy and the boys that should have taken more responsibility on the server kinda faded out with the low energy. But we talked about it afterwards and everyone was on the same page that it was needed, and that's what we've been focusing on a lot since we played last time - more energy, more people talking so that it's easier also for nexa to make decisions in the heat of the moment.

Has that been better for this game against Complexity, where it was obviously a lot more comfortable apart from the second half of Ancient?

We had a big team talk after the opening day, where we got to talk about a lot of the things that will make us a better team, we kinda needed that. Not that we didn't have any team talks before, but once you have official matches, now you have something to match up against.

After having the big team talk, we found some issues in our game that we wanted to fix and ever since, the players have been really eager to work. Everyone has been working so hard, it is our second week of bootcamp directly into BLAST, so they've been working very hard in that regard. The things we talked about instantly felt better from the day after, so I'm very confident that we can keep up showing like this.

nexa said in the BLAST interview that it's been difficult to find the balance of aggression with degster coming in as a more aggressive AWPer when you have quite a lot of aggressive pieces already. What has it been like from your point of view to get degster in on a permanent basis and try to find space for everybody?

Yeah (chuckles), that's my main focus at the moment, to find comfortableness for everyone. I think it comes around when we have someone doing something, we need to connect the pieces. Before, when we had mantuu, not that mantuu wasn't aggressive, but he was controlling a lot in our game. So now you have a guy that wants to do more, we obviously need to match some pieces together, and if degster is doing something here, [we need to find] what matches up with this peek, like playing a bit more on the same page.

As you said, we have a lot of aggro types in our team that want to take a lot of room and want to fight, so it's more about balancing than having to redo our whole playbook. Matching the things up together as the rounds happen is one of the things that we're working on.

Why do you think it worked in Lisbon when you only had degster for a couple of days?

I think these weird situations with stand-ins always bring something different to what you normally play. I think everyone felt the energy from the beginning, and that also makes it easier to adjust on the fly. At that tournament there were no expectations going in there, we had degster with us and, all of a sudden, we could see that we can push the good teams. That was kind of how we got the ball rolling.

But as I also said in the pre-game interview, at one point the normal days hit, now the real grind starts, and obviously some of the things we were doing there we need to set a bit more into the system so that everyone feels comfortable. Obviously, it works on your good days, but on your bad days you also need to have a system to fall back on.

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After the change happened, mantuu talked about not getting the chance to be more aggressive and being set up from the start to be a more passive, supportive AWPer. What is your response to that? Did you ever think about trying to have mantuu be more aggressive?

We had a lot of reflections, also with different in-game leaders throughout the time. The period where he felt the most comfortable was when he had Aleksi, who helped him set up a lot of these aggro moves. One of the reasons we made him a bit more of a control AWP was because, his decision-making was good, but sometimes it was also lacking a bit. All the aggro moves were kind of hit or miss and we wanted to build a system where everyone felt comfortable.

He's also a very, very skilled rifler, so that was one of the reasons he became a bit more of a controller in our team. At the end of the day, mantuu is a super good player, his stats don't lie, but I think we just came to a point in OG where we wanted to try a different type of AWPer in our team.

I'm curious about the setup in the organization and how much the players, yourself, or the management had a say in the move. Who made the final call on this?

It was me and my boss.

What were the biggest factors to make that call?

We talked a lot about it, obviously, because mantuu was a big part of our team and he's been loyal from the very beginning, so it's not just overnight that we made this decision. We talked a lot about what was the look we wanted to have for the team moving forward, was this a good time, was this not a good time... There were a lot of factors that at one point, also with degster being transfer-listed in Spirit, it made logic to do it at this point.

Obviously, if things were different, maybe we would have another timeline where mantuu did play the tournament and then we'd have to reevaluate other things. In the end, I think the decision will benefit us very well, we get a different type of AWPer in the team that the young guys can also look up to for some leadership and responsibility on the server.