ash: "Nearly all of our problems have been mental recently"

GamerLegion's coach has good feelings about the team's prospects in Bucharest after a 2-1 start.

GamerLegion are 2-1 in Romania after beating Legacy on the third day of play at the PGL Studios in Bucharest. The European squad missed out on the opening day upsets, falling to G2, but easily dispatched of Falcons before beating Legacy 2-1.

Ashley "⁠ash⁠" Battye took some time after GamerLegion's latest victory to talk about how his team is doing in Romania so far, and he shared his thoughts on Henrich "⁠sl3nd⁠" Hevesi's consistency and Oldřich "⁠PR⁠" Nový's evolution, as well as his outlook for what's to come.

If you can't see the audio embed above, click here to listen to the interview.

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First, I would like to roll it back to day one. It was a big upset day here in Bucharest, but you missed out on a chance against G2. Inferno was yours for the taking. Do you have a bit of regret there?

Yeah, I think we're still struggling quite a lot against these big teams, to get it over the line and play our best. Most of the times we've played against The MongolZ, other teams, it feels like we're just putting our six out of ten game all of the time, and we feel like we have lots of individual regrets, and mentally we're not ready.

I guess that's the downside of picking up talented young players — that you don't have it quite to get it over the line. Hopefully, the Falcons game helps us learn something from that, and in the future, we can do a little bit better.

Falcons have been looking... Not their best, to put it lightly. What were you expecting going into that game, did you think it would smooth sailing after seeing the opening day?

We thought there might be a vulnerability because having a rumor there never really helps, but we didn't expect it to be as simple as it was. I'd say they've been fairly impressive until this tournament, so I expected a really tough game. They just didn't really play like that.

It felt to me like we played probably our best game possible because so many times it felt like we ran into stacks, so they had really good ideas, but they weren't hitting their shots. Our pathing, our decision-making, our timings — it looked amazing, so it was the best of us against maybe the worst of them, and it just happened to collide on the same day. We just won all of the close rounds, and they looked really bad.

Today, against Legacy, if we go by the rankings, they're one of the weaker teams here, but it was more of a struggle. You had to go all of the way. What did you expect from them? Did you think they would be a challenge, or were you expecting an easier game?

In the team talk, we talked about how they beat Liquid for a reason. We beat Falcons, the first top ten team we beat, and they obviously beat Liquid straight away, so it's not like we could just take it for granted.

We knew there was going to be something about them, and in prep it looked like they were a very explosive team, but I've got to say, in this game, what really surprised me... And I don't really know anything about this team, so don't take this out of context. I don't know who their in-game leader is, but I was so impressed by some of the mid-rounding. It felt like they were reading the game perfectly, getting the timings down, and then they were exploding where they needed to.

Especially on Inferno, it felt like we were getting the entry kind of easily, and then in the late-round, they were just outplaying us super hard. I wasn't expecting this level of experience at the end of the round. I thought it would be set rounds, super explosive, shut them down or we lose, and I was very surprised by the way they played overall.

One of the things you spoke about recently was the need for a mentality shift in the team, maybe being a little more confident in your game. Is that something you've worked on that has changed from the last events?

I think a little bit, but there's still a long way to go. Tactically, we've become a lot better, and today, I do feel like we should have won the first and second maps super quickly. On the Ancient game, as well, but like I said, in the mid-rounds, we felt like we got so outplayed. That's the frustrating thing for me because it felt like we had so many positions where we had like 90% chance to win the round and we lost like seven, eight, nine, ten of them, at least. This is going to hurt us really bad next game if we don't get this down.

We have to find some composure at the end of these rounds. The Inferno one was almost unforgivable because we were constantly 5vs4 and 5vs3, and we know we're a really good Inferno team. To constantly give up those rushes, retakes, and the same happened on Ancient. Just giving those chances to them, and then they punish us in every way possible. They did it like, it felt like we were playing G2 at times, when they were able to take us apart. There's a lot to learn from this.

I think we're getting a bit better with our confidence, and we're starting our games faster now. Before, it felt like we had to claw our way back in all of the time. Today we lost some bad rounds we could bounce back from, but there's still a long way to go with this team.

You're in this group of teams with like Astralis and 3DMAX and these teams that are either breaking in or teams that were up and are struggling and down a bit, but it seems at times you don't get as much attention as the teams around you. Do you think there's a reason for that?

To be fair, the games we seem to play, we've been missing a lot of the top competition. I think people are kind of downplaying us because of that, but at the same time, we're playing the teams that keep beating the other teams. Like we want to play the top teams, we'd love to play Liquid or someone here, but then they lose to Legacy. It has happened at all of the tournaments so far. We're beating the teams that shouldn't have won the game before.

I think, in itself, it shows something because if we're consistently beating the teams below us — maybe it's not 100% right now, but it's close — it means that we don't get the chances to play these other teams when they trip down. When we're ninth seed in Buchholz and we think like, okay, at least if we lose to the first seed, then we'll get a good seed next time, and then we see every single team nearly lose, then it just makes you feel bitter about everything because you're like, 'Why are we having to play first seed in the first game if we're not getting any advantage in the second one and we have to play Falcons or a top 10 team again?'

But yeah, I think people are giving us credit. It'll hopefully come in time. We have to prove ourselves, we have to make playoffs, we have to beat some more top 10 teams, and it'll come naturally.

You talked about bringing in young players, and that's your trademark...

It's becoming it, yeah. [Laughs]

One of the players I wanted to talk about particularly was sl3nd. I remember the first event he came into was Thunderpick, and off the bat, he was doing some crazy stuff. He was very electric, and after that, he struggled a bit, so it was like, 'OK, here is the adjustment period.' Ever since, it seems like he's going up and down and not finding consistency. What could you say about that, and is it something you're trying to work through?

Yeah, for sure. We're trying to work through it. He's been here for quite a long time now and we've evolved so quickly as a team that he's having to learn as quickly as we are, trying to become a top 10 team obviously because we're right on the edge, so we're even aiming a bit higher, and he has a lot to learn. But it's not just him; it's everyone.

Mentally, at times, he struggled a bit, but I think it's more of a CS2 issue at times because all AWPers in the game right now don't have any confidence. They're just getting killed really fast, only three or four AWPers in the world are standing out, and they're generally good with the rifle, as well, so that has been really hard for him. Also, it feels like it knocked his confidence, and he's taking fewer risks.

The last few weeks, we've been talking about how do we get him [to be] more impactful, and hopefully, at this tournament, it's pretty apparent that he's more impactful even if he hasn't found his full consistency yet. There's a long way to go, and doing this in CS2 is miserable for AWPers right now. It really is. I don't know how you can be consistent without being very strong mentally, and it's something he's really working hard on.

On the other hand, with PR, a newer addition, it seems like you've really found a gem there.

Yeah, we knew we were getting a gem. [Laughs] Going on recommendations and everything, but yeah. He has things to work on, as well, I think he gets a little bit frustrated with his game at times, but he's much better at this than he was three months ago, for example. I can tell there's a bit improvement in his mental game, he's doing a great job overall.

I'm super surprised by his decision-making. Even when he was dead one round, we had the bomb down on A Main on Ancient and we smoked it, and he told Tauson, 'Don't play now,' because it was a 3vs1 and the guy was obviously looking at the smoke and he had nowhere to look and so he might check, and I think Tauson was going to peek.

Seeing this, I wouldn't expect him to have this sort of understanding, and there are lots of moments like this where he's obviously learning super fast, and for me, that shows a player that will get a lot better in the future if he keeps his passion for the game.

You're 2-1 now, a pretty decent position to be in after three matches. How are you feeling about how these first days have gone and looking forward in the tournament?

I'm feeling very good. I think nearly all of our problems have been mental recently. It's kind of showing when I look back at our games; it feels like we're winning. We're losing too many 80% rounds that we should win, or whatever teams win, 4vs3s, afterplants, retakes when the round's already won and seems decided. If they're the things to be worried about right now, I think we're doing a good job.

Our pistols are on point, my assistant coach is doing a great job with that, leading all of that stuff. I think we've got a lot of positives, but we've got to find another 20% to beat these top teams. We can't afford to keep giving these rounds away because it will lose us games.