Swani: "Management asked HooXi, he wanted a different coach, but in the end TaZ was here"

G2's former skipper and analyst went into detail about some of the internal issues and management decisions made during the end of his tenure.

Retired G2 analyst-turned-coach Jan "⁠Swani⁠" Müller appeared on HLTV Confirmed on Wednesday to shed light on some of the team's issues during his tenure.

The German spoke at length about how management ignored players' advice when making roster moves, a lack of support staff to help him and Rasmus "⁠HooXi⁠" Nielsen with their workload, and more.

Watch the episode here.

One of the early conversation topics revolved around the removal of Justin "⁠jks⁠" Savage in February 2024, with Zvonimir "⁠Professeur⁠" Burazin asking the retired coach to share insight into the reason as little was said at the time other than the Australian not being as social a person.

"You have to look at the bigger picture as well," Swani began. "After Sydney, where everything started, was a very weird situation for everyone, but we already had a lot of talks with Justin [jks] before.

"Because in team talks and stuff it was always very hard to get a lot of information out of him, you really had to push him, you had to just get him out of his shell, which sometimes for other teammates can be hard. Especially if you sit next to a guy who is always very calm, and the guy sitting next to him is very emotional, hypes him up if he does something good, but he never gets something in return.

"Like you always say 'Nice round, nice round,' and you never get anything back in return. Then if things aren't working out, it hits ten times harder because whenever we won, it was like putting a bandaid on things. Like okay we won, but we're just pushing the problem a bit further because we were working on it for a long time, but it never really got better."

Swani said it came to a head after Sydney when rumors about Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač leaving started and Nemanja "⁠huNter-⁠" Kovač and Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov both got offers from other teams. G2 tried to plan for the potential of losing NiKo's voice, which felt like a big enough loss to warrant changing two players, but it is a decision Swani admits was rushed and a mistake.

"We should have definitely taken more time to find a better solution for replacing jks, but yeah, that's a management decision because in the end, management is making all those decisions," he said.

"There was input [from members of the team]," he added when asked about whether the changes were solely on management. "But in the end it didn't really change their mind. They were set on something and there wasn't much to convince them.

"I can understand them a bit because you cannot really rely on input of people you expect to leave, like you expected NiKo to leave, you expected huNter- to leave, can you really consider their input in the end?"

Swani later clarified that when he is speaking about management, he is talking about Julius Ylänne, G2's Head of Esports, and Petar "⁠peca⁠" Marković, G2's Counter-Strike General Manager.

Swani then said he left the lineup because he didn't believe in it, particularly with the team's early struggles in CS2 and with Nemanja "⁠nexa⁠" Isaković not proving a vocal replacement for jks.

"We expected nexa to talk a lot more, that's one of the main reasons we picked him because he was IGL before and we wanted to replace a bigger voice and have a bigger second voice. But in the end, we also got a quiet guy who didn't talk too much, so... I don't know, everything went bad and this was really the downfall for me, it killed my motivation big time."

The German coach later expanded on why he left the team, saying he got burned out after having little to no support as the organization did not hire an analyst for him.

"What also killed me a lot was that for the whole year, I didn't have an analyst or assistant coach, and I think we were the only team in the top 20 that didn't have that stuff. So I had to learn how to coach, I had to be on the road for over 200 days, and I had to do everything by myself together with Rasmus [HooXi].

"So after December I was like, 'Holy shit, I'm actually dead inside,' like really burned out because people don't see how much you have to do outside of the game. You have to prepare theory, practices, goals, you have to do a lot of shit outside of the game which takes a lot of time, and then after practice people come to you and say, "Hey can you look at this,' so it's taking a lot of time when you're alone."

Swani said he wished NiKo left earlier after the rumors first emerged as it left the team in a limbo, wondering when he would leave, and a rebuild could have started earlier.

Conversation then turned to G2 in the six months after Swani's departure, with the team picking up Wiktor "⁠TaZ⁠" Wojtas to replace him.

"I think they already started on a very, very bad note by picking up TaZ because HooXi never really had input," he said. "I talked to him as well, and management asked him for his input and he wanted a different coach, but in the end while we were in bootcamp, TaZ was here.

"For me, your IGL and coach need to have a good bond and your IGL has to decide, you need to trust him and let him decide, not management. This was the first bad thing. He was already not on the best terms instantly because obviously he wanted something else.

"When you're G2 and you act or want to be Real Madrid or someone who wants to win, you cannot pick up a rookie coach. It was fine with me because I knew the guys for four years, I knew what they needed, and it wasn't a big step up for me — just a title change.

"But I don't think you can put a rookie coach in charge of G2 because they're a big team, they need to win, and if you don't have the results, you don't really get the time to learn because the community will bash you and it will take a toll."

Swani added that he didn't blame TaZ for taking the offer, but he didn't think it was the right decision to put him in the team when HooXi didn't want him.

Later in the show, Swani gave his thoughts on the departure of NiKo and m0NESY, talked about the new Falcons roster, and joined the panel is discussing results from PGL Bucharest and the Austin Major Regional Qualifiers. You can watch the whole episode here.