lmbt: "Nothing could affect us because we knew who's standing there in the front lines. We're doing this for them"

Monte's coach had some words to share after his team qualified for the Paris Major.

Monte have had an impressive run since arriving in Copenhagen, becoming the third team from Europe RMR B to advance to the BLAST.tv Paris Major after defeating FORZE in a 2-0 series. The Ukrainian side recorded impressive best-of-one victories over Cloud9 and ENCE to kick off their tournament run, but suffered a temporary setback after falling to HEROIC 0-2 in their first attempt to qualify for Paris.

Sergey "⁠lmbt⁠" Bezhanov has stood behind the team since January, joining up alongside Viktor "⁠sdy⁠" Orudzhev. The team have showcased a strong uptick in form since adding the pair, with lmbt's wealth of experience helping bolster a team of relatively young players. The 35-year-old Ukrainian coach spoke about what that experience has been like so far, his thoughts on Monte's tournament run, and on the reason that the team did not shake hands with FORZE following their victory in their last series.

You made your way back to a Major, this time with a crazy mix of up-and-coming guys. How was that experience for you, coaching them to a Major?

It was my dream to coach a young team for a while already. I started after MOUZ, I started to coach AVANGAR, but it was only a month. They were very young guys, but then COVID came and the project was shut down because it was based in Ukraine and the team moved back to Kazakhstan, so obviously I couldn't work with them anymore.

So yeah, these guys made my dream come true. I joined this team three months ago with Viktor [sdy] and we had only two goals: Qualifying for the RMR — qualifying for a Major wasn't even a goal — and winning ESL Challenger to qualify for EPL. Both goals were reached in three months and that's insane.

You were in MOUZ before with all of these established players, guys that had their careers going. Now it's a very different group of people, hungry up-and-coming guys, maybe not as formed as veterans. What was that difference like for you?

In MOUZ it was long term roster-building. It took us one year to build a roster there that was actually a top team. We also picked up ropz, who was not an established guy, so I have some experience with that. But here, joining this team, I knew who was here. I knew Woro2k very well, and DemQQ, and obviously I knew Viktor. And I knew who BOROS is, obviously. With kRaSnaL, I was talking to suNny, who presented this player to me.

From the very first day I saw what this team is capable of, they have an insane amount of skill, motivation, and will to work. You know, and everyone knows, how many maps we played. That was super painful because we had to forfeit some maps or matches due to scheduling conflicts, but there's no other way to go up from tier three. We made it, basically us and 9INE, I want to mention them because I'm very happy for them as well. These are two top tier three teams that made it in the same way, through the same route. I just trusted my guys since day one because I see what they're capable of.

When you joined the team, the goal was to make the RMR. At what point did you say 'Oh, we can make the Major.'

Everyone was saying this is the group of death, right? And it's confirmed by the results. Basically, it came to us after day one, for sure, because when we were playing ENCE... We knew the map like four weeks before, as soon as the seeding was done. We won that map super comfortably, it was 15-3 and we threw some rounds. At 15-3 it was what Viktor already said in an interview, which was to not show our strats.

Then, when we played C9, that game gave us the answer that we will definitely qualify because we saw the difference in raw aim. We're outaiming teams so hard that even if we make some mistakes we will compensate for it with aim. We understood that we can outaim like 90 percent of the teams in our group. That was the moment we knew that, 'Okay, we have two lives, three lives, and even a fourth with the last chance qualifier.' We knew we'd make it in the best-of-threes because we have a very strong map pool.

You mention 9INE as a team similar to you, making it in the group of death, but you guys weren't considered to be the death part of that group and yet you made it through. What do you make of it?

When you're playing so much you know the real power of the teams in your group. The real power, not statistics, not results — like FORZE or ENCE in EPL —, we knew the real power of the teams. We knew that G2 and Heroic would make it for sure, the big dogs, but against any other team we knew that we had a map pool advantage. Like almost an automatic 1-0 in any matchup, that's how we knew that we did a good job in these past three months.

Looking forward now, it'll take a while for your guys to realize they're Major players. But what's next for you guys up until Paris?

First of all, this tournament is not over because we're playing to get into the Legends Stage. We don't know what team we'll play against, but we'll see, we'll know them today. Then we'll go back to the grind, probably like two CCTs... In total we had ten practice days, like ten clean pracc days, including a bootcamp. We were just practicing in officials, so we'll just keep doing this. It was a part of our success so why should we remove that?

The only problematic part was leaving Ukraine, obviously, you know what's happening there. I want to just give respect to our armed forces because we've been playing without electricity these three months. We had rockets above our heads, and these guys, my teammates, were able to go through it no matter what. We were dropping and disconnecting during matches and still winning. Nothing could affect us because we knew who's standing there in the front lines. We're doing this for them, I know they're watching, and we're doing it for all Ukrainian people that are cheering for us. Slava Ukraini.

One last thing, I notice you didn't shake hands with FORZE...

Yes, I will explain it, it's very simple. They have a sponsor, which is Lukoil, one of the biggest oil companies in Russia. They're paying taxes and paying for the Russian tanks that are shooting us on Ukrainian land. They're fueling Russian airplanes that are sending missiles to our cities. While we were playing this match the whole Ukrainian territory was in an airstrike defense mode and alarm. The full map of Ukraine was red. So how can you shake hands with people supporting the war? That's very easy for us. That's how it is. In the frontline, backline, online, that's how it is. I hope it will end one day. And I'll mention someone like hooch, who can be respected for his position, but everyone else… It's just as simple as that.