Devilwalk: "We've created a very strong bond and I'm enjoying every moment"

The Swedish coach spoke to HLTV following Bad News Eagles's second win at the European RMR in Copenhagen.

Bad News Eagles have become stable presence at the Regional Major Ranking events in the previous two cycles, qualifying for both the PGL Antwerp and the IEM Rio Majors in 2022 despite not having the best of records in other competitions. They are now on the verge of qualification for the third consecutive Valve-sponsored event after taking down Apeks to claim a 2-1 record in the Swiss stage at BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 Europe RMR A.

Coach Jonatan "⁠Devilwalk⁠" Lundberg, a one-time Major winner himself with fnatic, took over the coaching role for the Kosovar squad in January and is now one step away from securing his spot in the last CS:GO Major. The Swede sat down with HLTV after Bad News Eagles's win over Apeks to talk about the event, the team's Major record, and his players' high-energy approach to matches.

First thing I want to open with is, before the tournament started, you said that maybe you're ready to shock some teams. What did you mean by those words?

We worked a lot on our T side and we brought in a lot of new things. Obviously it takes some time for them to adapt because they've had kind of that all out aggressive style, but we kind of want to mix it in with something else sometimes when it's not working for us. That we have more ability to adapt, basically, to different opponents, because sometimes it's really good against some teams to be very aggressive and some teams you need to be a little bit more patient because they're aware of that, so we kind of need to mix and match to find a good balance.

That's essentially what I mean by that, I think we struggled on our T sides before I joined and it's something we worked really hard. I think we proved this last game [against Apeks] that it has improved and it has gotten better, so I'm very happy about that.

Talking about trying to make the team be able to play more than one style and be able to change it up when needed. Are there any influences or somebody you look at to say 'This is a style that we want to try and add to our repertoire'?

Not really, we defined different styles as I have them in my mind and as they have them in theirs and to just be able to switch up into these different ways we feel are good in the meta right now to play and also suit the players. That's an important aspect because you can't just copy a team and think that you're going to find success, because at the end of the day we have to beat these teams.

That's the classic, not so much forcing players into a system but making a system that works for the players that you have. Can you tell me a bit about how you've gone about creating a system for the players that you have?

We've had talks about how everyone can't get the perfect role in every round and someone has to sacrifice themselves for the greater good in this case. We talked a lot about that because a problematic thing is when you hard-define roles and say 'This is my job and this is the other guy's job' all of the time. I think you will eventually play worse CS, so it's important that we take responsibility areas in different rounds and that everyone gets some share of the spoils.

How is it on the personal level? This is a pretty wild bunch, known for their warm blood. On the other hand you're kind of chill, Swedish, from a different culture. How has the mix gone in the human aspect?

It's going great, they're super chill. They're good, positive human beings and I think that I thrive in this environment when it's high energy, high intensity, because I'm very high intensity when the game is live. Outside of the game I'm very chill, but I think that this passion... it matches, it motivates everyone on the team to work harder and do more things for each other. It's just a great team environment to have, they're a special bunch of people and I feel like I've known them for five years already. We've created a very good, strong bond, and I'm enjoying every moment.

Bad News Eagles are kind of Major specialists and maybe get a bit lost when it comes to playing online. Times like these is when they got their first big push at the Antwerp RMR, then they made it through the last one and are expected to go through now just because they're that sort of team. How confident are you going into series play now with a positive record?

We have just been looking forward to the best-of-three stages because we worked a lot on developing our map pool to make it strong, to make sure that we can be in contention and not lose every time an opponent picks a map to punish us. That included bringing in Overpass at the beginning of the year, which was their auto veto the year before and they never really played an official on it before I joined, I think. That took a lot of work to make sure that we're ready to play, and it's a hard map to understand theoretically, as well, so they've been doing a great job. I even forgot the question as I was answering... [laughs]

Just how BNE are Major specialists, getting to the BO3s now...

Oh, yeah, yeah! We're comfortable with it. We feel confident. We feel like the only ones we can lose to are ourselves, so we work a lot on having lower expectations because they've gone to the Major twice in a row now and I know how it gets into your brain no matter if you believe it or not and that's kind of what happened in the first game. We had too high expectations, then anything that goes wrong kind of puts you off.

Now we look at this game as a completely different team and nobody is tilting, nobody is angry, everyone is bringing ideas and keeping the energy positive — it's something we really worked on coming into this because it happens very often online that we get into the wrong state of mind.

You just came out of a tough game against Apeks, who were not considered one of the big teams to go through. You were maybe favorites to win the match, but it got to overtime and was a whole thing. How did you live that from inside the server?

It's hard when you're back there and can't bring energy and positivity at every moment, but the mentality was super strong. I think at one point we were down 3-9 or something like that when they were on T and everyone was just super happy, positive, joking around, and it was really needed. The boys had such a strong mentality today and that really pulled us through. SENER1 was really good with that today.