this is Kenya's the number one opera inthe world according to foreign you'rewatching foreign channel also known as anumber one exit door right this isanother episode of talk to Thoren and myguest for this one is gonna be Ocelot orCarlos as he prefers to be known as nowbut it's not an actual player anymorehe's the owner of g2 eSports obviouslyso Ocelot if we start off in the realmof CS core it's actually a little bit ofa contentious time to be a fan of g2 incsgo or someone who is a player for g2actually in terms of like noir reallyknows where the the squads going whatthe vision is at the moment there'sobviously been a lot of moves this yeara lot of turnover of players and at theend of the year bizarrely it's kind oflike an uncertain scenario maybe evenmore so than earlier in the year so ifwe wind back the clock I won't ask thisinitial question so coming out of lastyear 2017 that was when the team hadwhat was on paper dubbed like the Frenchsuper team because you got Kenny Essenshocks into a team at the first time youknow it was like in theory all thebetter players that were in the Frenchscene when the last shuffle happened youknow like it looked on they're politeright this is the lineup to try and eventhough I know a lot of fans kind ofderisive Lee used that term like Frenchsuper team because they said like theresults didn't actually like sort ofjustify that the reason the term wascreated is because the idea is when hewhen the team was created it seemed likea super teen these same at the rightplayers you know whether they made it ornot right will use someone if we rollthe clock back to earlier this year whenwe heard there was going to be rostermoves we used someone who looked at lastyear and fought last year's results wereacceptable I mean obviously there was acouple of chumps in there but you knowthe mages there wasn't any super deepfinishes that wasn't kind of a lot ofconsistency to the team what do youthink of last year's g2 yeah that'sgiven us in 17 I'm assuming so 2017 italways depends what's the angle you'relooking at it from right because if youare a tier 2 organization or tier 3organization that you would assume thedadier was a huge success but from ourpoint of view you know everywhere youlook at every nevwe're present we make very clear plansto win whatever the game that is andespecially if it's a a game such ascounter-strike which for us is a youknow easily top three game in terms ofimportance so of course when we werethinking about putting together hissuper team and we were you know talkingwith the players and things like that wealways thought and had in mind that wewanted to win plenty of majors you knowand we are not naive we know that weknew back then that you know you can'tjust pick up the best play or what Iconsider the best players from from asingle country and then expect to wineverything because especially incounter-striketeam play is key you know and on theback of my head I always had this youknow sharks and mvk will they get a longthing and it was always on the back ofmy head before anything like this youknow before they the shot what happened[Music]however if you look at the expectationsthat we had back then and how the yearwent the year was a catastrophe becausewe really wanted to be in hltv top threeconsistently throughout the whole yearyou know and that of course didn'thappen now I'm assuming you will youwill ask more questions in regards tothe team and I'm sure I'm gonna be ableto give more kind of light in regards toall the thought processes that went toit and all that but just to down bitdown to a single sentence it was acatastrophe considering the expectationsthat we had okay so then coming intothis year people will remember thatthere was this bizarre scenario where onthe one hand we heard right shocks us toGore and he has to get the surgery onhis hand you know he's gonna be out ofthe lineup and then somehow that's themoment when simultaneously the team hadsome self like he fractured internallyand then shocks wanted to go and makebasically something similar to the teamhe made this year and was obviouslyusing up until recently and then NBDcare didn't want to do that and so ifyou care one is to try being the in-gameleader and then we saw you actually lethim be caredo that initially any kind of I got anexperiment or period where he could trythis different lineup with mix whilepeople don't remember joined the teamand then that had like off the top of myhead maybe like three LANs or somethingthen it was kind of canceled and we wentinto the other lineup so first andforemost like take me through that anglelike how do you get to a situation wherehalf the team wants to go one way orhalf the singles the other war andyou're kind of the one having to choosewhich she do right so first of all it isvery frustrating and that incounter-strike a culture where the powerof the team is within the players hasgrown she's many years ago and I don'tknow any other game where these culturesis present and yes just for context wehave absolute full control or we had andhave absolute full control over everyteam however Connor strike was always aproblem because of the culture withwhich the teams were formed and theculture you know this open market nessin terms of league organizers and thingslike that which makes it so you knoworganizations especially years ago hadno leverage whatsoever and as a resultof that all these you know lineups beingput together and and essentiallydefining what the terms of the contractsare going to be and things like thatit then arose and then you know after somany years where this culture and youknow keep kept growing and growing andgrowing then if you look back three fouryears from today you see a lot ofexamples of teams that almost implodedbecause the players had the full controlover their teams and there is a reasonwhy every traditional sport there's areason why if it's a game was more thanone be one you need an organization thatbacks that line up not only through youknow boot camps and whatever you knowcontent creation machine whatever it isbut also to take the hard decisions thatthe players can't take players arebiased players andthat's the nature of a player I've beena player myself I was biased as [ __ ] youknow I was you know and I was thecaptain of the team as well which makesit even worse you know and I had a lotof power over my team because of how bigmy brand was and now I realize how wellnow and hey here's they're gonna knowthat I'm the CEO of the company Irealize how bad that is because it'llmake undeniably the team worse over timebecause there will be a moment in timein which you have to take a really toughdecision that involves or may involvedyou know that a friend of yours has tobe kicked or you have to be kicked andthen emotions come into play and that'swhere you lose track of what reallymatters which is winning yes it's veryimportant that you make friends butwe're not in a reality TV show we're notyou know building friendships only thisis the business of competition so yougotta win right so now that I gave youthe context of all this which i think isis a self-explanatory but now I'm gonnaconnect the dots um you know when whenwhen I realized that there was a problemin the team when we all realized thatthere was a problem in the team thatwent beyond even in game and you knowdisagreements was far earlier actuallythen then when this happens with sharksbut of course you always sort of fixthings there's always the nexttournament does the beauty of sportsright there's always tomorrow there'salways the next tournament you have youcan people member ayack she believed Ithink it was even said in an interviewthat the team had even been consideredroster moves before they won that dreamMcMasters Malmo which was in last year2017 like no it's like winning thetournament solve like you knowtemporarily made things fine again rightand they know it takes a long time foryou address the underlying issueyeah there's two points to that pointnumber one it's true there is a kind offalse sense of security and false senseof yeah we're really good right nowquite frankly that tournament was nicebut it wasn't a major so you know it wasa falseof grandiosity if that's a word is thata wordyeah okay today I learned and and thenthere's the other side of the coin whichis you know in in that moment kind ofmade them feel as if you know that theywere good or as good as they weresupposed to be but at the same timewinning the tournament also gave him asmall sense of entitlement and a smallsmall sense of kind of we already madeit made it and which which you know fora competitor at this level in a gamelike this you just can't allow yourselfto get to that point because you haveall these other guys 17 18 years of age19 years of age they just breathecontract you know and when you start youknow I'm gonna take the morning off youknow I'm gonna go these in that and youstart planning holidays and you startplanning other stuff you know you're anexperienced counter-strike player forten years or whatever unless I'm justmaking a case and it happens in otherteams right but then what happens isthat you stop breathing counter-strikeyou stop becoming the player that'sobsessed with the game you stop havingdreams about you headshot in people justyou know when you're showering you stopbeaming the shower for 45 minutesthinking about how you're gonna openbanana you know and this is what happenswhen you're a player and I remember themoment I stopped having these dreams themoment I stopped having thesevisualizations by default with intrinsicmotivation is the moment I stop becominga good player myself so this happens atsome point in the in the careers so Ithink what happens when that mom andapproaches you have to shift your roleright and in sometimes the game allowsyou to be kind of more supportive andless flashybut something the game doesn't in a gamelike Counter Strike you the super playerhas to hit hatches you know even thesupport player has to breed the gamelike you he sometimes carries we see itin every team you know and and I thinkthat that's something that not everybodyyou know kind of understoodand in many times many times you'll findright now teams at the top or halfwaythrough the rankings that will haveplayers like those and there's not muchyou can do to prevent it you just haveto either give it a full try and give itclear deadlines or just replace theplayer because then the hungers goneso so I think I think there was a littlebit of that by the moment when we wonDreamhack Malmo actually a little bit ofthat um a you know perhaps also from thesupport stuff so here's the team as awhole em and and I think that led theteam to a worse direction after you haveMalmo nothing went right is nothing 1right and and and you could see how theywere just playing just to play you knowmany of them not all of them but many ofthem were just playing to play and theydon't like each other as matching gamewhen you are set with I don't like thisguy I don't like this guy or I don'tlike the way we play or you know whenyou're set with that mindset then isreally hard to get back on track ifresults are also negative and it didn'tmatter what the support staff did itdidn't matter what I did it didn'tmatter what they did sometimes you justneed a harsh change so on one side I didnot agree with changing the super teambecause I was like [ __ ] my life thisteam is unbelievable we have to makethis work somehow you know I was alreadybigger interviewing sports psychologistsaround the world I was just breaking mybones to try to make this work butultimately the player is defined betweenthe between themselves we can't we can'tkeep going like this and we are losingthe love for the game and and somethinghas to changeso we had countless conversations aboutabout this they had countlessconversations about this and they cameto the conclusion that the best thingwas to separate kind of MBK and haveApex from or Richard is to separate fromMBK and apex and also you know Kenny aswell and you know there's many reasonswhy why they took this decisionbut which I'm not gonna get into becauseit's too private but but that isn't itthat way so then you we as anorganization we have not many optionshere right what do we doof course I would love to keep the teamas it is but you can't force do downtheir throats that they stay as it issure on top of that you have the thesurgery of Richard which is incrediblyunfortunate but thankfully thank God itcame out very well and his hitting headshots against I'm very happy about thatso all these variables that we had infront of us we had to take a decisionright and first of all I'm a bigbeliever that and this is also the casewith employee employees in training withstaff right rightI always like to give a an opportunitythat is tangible and has a cleardeadline to everybody involved andthat's exactly what happened with whatyou can call the B team right I just forthe sake of conversation show which wasMBK and you know apex and mix well andgel area so it you know what we agreedon was let's try that out and if itdoesn't work out and we spoke internallywhat it means that it doesn't work outso it was very clear whether he give usany kind of insight into that I meanobviously I was you know the players togo on this line yeah it's like a key wasbasically it's work done yeah it wasbasically certain competitive resultswhich were very realistic right nothingout of the you know out of the ordinaryand if those results would have beenachieved then there was a very highlikely Ness that we would have stayedwith that team and when I when I never ahundred percent because you have toagree on terms you have to agree on manythings but he was that was gonna be thedirection and he was like a trial periodso when the trial period ended and itwas clear to us that this team was notgonna win a major and it was not thedecor that we I mean it was clear to wecould be wrong right but you know in ourmind we thought this is not a team thatcan win a major we really like them andbelieve me like MBK and apexthoughtwo guys are [ __ ] amazing like youspeak to them just great people in termsof marketing and branding they're[ __ ] amazing they stream they createcontentAPICS has fun so many times every timethere's a tournament there is a memesabout him which is great for brandawareness for g2 you know I love them Ireally really love them but sometimesagain you have to take these you knowtargets take the hard route and thehardware in that case was to open theteam that we ended up going with it's umnow m'as you know there was a lot offlack and there is a lot of flacktowards the players towards reach herand to was MBK and towards theorganization and towards everybody youknow people just like to be outraged andsometimes it is it is rightfully but inthis case I believe that we all took thedecision like nobody was beingunreasonable here the players couldn'tget along with each other in N oroutside the game I say don't have thevariables at hand that we had and wejust did the best we could we were wehad simple and now it gets into kind ofthe team there another team that wecurrently have with the team with Smithand sisters okay what about this then soa question I have is right actuallyconsidering you ended up with thisreally difficult situation where likeyou know the team wants to go todifferent directions in a weird wayactually ended up being sort of like itkind of made the decision not asdifficult that Shox had to go and do thesurgery anywhere needed his recoverytime so actually the kind of time whenhe was off recovering was kind of anideal time throwing this on the lineupand to be like right let's even a pathof little distance let's give you someset goals and if you can do it in thispeer then okay you can continue if notthen you know we rethink what we'redoing because then Shox is a variableagain where's obviously he couldn't haveplayed in this lineup anywhere thequestion is this would you not have beenworried that if the lineup will then becare had have worked and let's say thatlike that's it done amazingly that's sothey'd wanted to annemun or somethingyou know and you were like right you'vegot to continue with this lean thatmeans basically you would have had topotentially give away a shocks right hemight have been the player often a neworganization now doing something I wouldthat not a concern for you yeah I meanthis is like the the lesser of two evilsright you have to pick between thelesser of two evils because again for meI would have kept the super team andjust part of workslooking around around it it's changedone player perhaps that's about it maybeget existence for somebody I don't knowyou know in my mind everything wasactually everything was fixablebut I wasn't pathetic with the person Iwas like okay so did this you know forthem is a no-go so then I had to go foroption B right which is again the optionwe weren't for it and you're absolutelyright at some point if we would haveneed to go with the team with the MBKand ethics then that would have meantthat we would have need to sell shocksand maybe even Kenny because Kennydidn't you know Kenny wasn't also askeen as to you know play with that teameither so you see all these differentkind of dynamics it was reallycomplicated and then you ask yourselfthen you have [ __ ] Kenny s right andhe may have gone good and bad years butif you get this rat if you get if youput together an environment for Kenny tothrive he will one be [ __ ] ninethat's Kenny so you if you have Kennyunder contract you don't just give outKenny you know and I'm sure that manypeople would have taken the samedecision you know it it was it was itwas just very complicated it was reallyvery complicated and I was looking withwith him with hopeful eyes the career ofzero actually and and I was alwaystalking to our support stuff about zeroC was you see I keep reading about him Ikeep reading about him you should try itout which you should speak with him weshould you know we should try to get himwe should Allah and and you know wenever pulled the triggerand I actually I blame myself for notgoing even harder than that not gettingzero is definitely something that I'mnot very happy about and and I because Imean you see the guys is kicking ass buton the other hand and taking that awayfrom the equation the fighter being atzero into the mix I'm relatively happyor actually I'm happy with the resumewith two considering the very harddecision we had to make okay well I havea question that's got a littleof a build up here okay but it'll be onethat you will understand the premise allvery well so there's a story I haveactually told on a number of occasionseither when I'm talking specificallyabout SK gaming the organization or whatI've just been giving the analogy of howsomeone who's in a multi gamingorganization deals with games he doesn'tfollow as explicitly like in depth sofor example the contrast to this wouldbe Jack from Cloud 9 or Reginald fromTSM right they came up through theirgame that is their game if it's aboutLeague of Legends they're not just gonnabe like oh you know I'll take everyone'sadvice think of themselves kind of anopinion no it's their game they have asense of who they might want to seeplaying the team and they think shouldbe removed they can kind of be informedas well as well as being the owner but Iknow for example and the guy who youwill working under I was working underwhen I was at SK gaming Alex mauler theslash when he would have to come to doone of these decisions like I'm gonnakick a player or I'm gonna recruit aplayer he basically once told me likewhat I do is in each team I have my guylike this is the guy we're in the teamlike he's the main person I communicateit was often it would be the leader ofthe team you know yes I'll give you anexample in the CS team back when I wasasked a game it was Robin the guy who'sactually caught your fears now he wasthe ingame leader and so and he alsoeven before you think here maybe he'dbeen there many years since he was aveteran the logic that Alex had was likeif it comes to a tough decision and Ihave to choose between like two playersit's not like an obvious one likeeveryone wants to get this guy and everwants to get this guy what I do is I goto my guy and I kind of like he can kindof like give me the expert opinion as itwas yes and the notion was in that senseit's not just Alex who's deciding theteam someone else gets some input aswell but you got a vision you've got aclear vision in mind I obviously I'mguessing in the League of Legends teamyou probably played a similar role youknow you were one of the key pieces formany years it seemed as though theplayers who came in and now players thatyou kind of approved of you know havehave you has it been something similarwith you and shocks in this team becauseobviously he's been the wrestler who'sremained the entire time the team's beenin g2 so I had has shocks being someonewho's been able to have thatrelationship with you in terms of likenot just a player but if he tells yousomething kind of like you gotta trustit mm-hmmyeah I'd say so and the the challengehere was that there were two alpha malesI don't know if you can call them alphamales but they weretwo alphas there were two leaders in theteam or the problem of having twoleaders in the team is that you youdon't have is not quite as clear youknow it's not that it's not as clear-cutas it is if you have only one in thiscase it was MBK as well so you have twoguys that are considered leaders thatare considered alpha so to say againjust for the sake of conversation andand and you gotta cater to both of thembecause both of them have you know goalsaround what they want the team to looklike both of them have you know veryproactive and think very much a lotabout what they want the team to looklike so you have to cater to both ofthem and that is a challenge becausewhen both of them have polar oppositeviews is when you run into the problemthat we run ourselves ultimately weended up signing with chalks I guess youcan stay that way and because I just Iliterally have another year and a halfof experience with him and I have cometo realize that more often than nottrusting Shoxis the right thing to do for the purposeof building a successful team soultimately I want a woman with job againit's not the only variable is not theonly reason but it's one of the reasonswhy and we knew each other for a lot oftime also you know he was going throughthe surgery and and I also wanted togive him a little bit of a you know avote of confidence after the surgery hewas a combination of reasons just verycomplicated a lot of dynamics but weended up going with with chefs as youknow okay right one thing about thislineup okay let's go like player byplayer as opposed to the entire lineupso obviously one of the big moves whichpeople will remember was announced inthat interview he did with shocks whenit was also announced that you give theMBK ladder patroonship who's gonna go dosurgery there's one yesin this interview shock said that if hegot his chance in g2 he would make thisteam and obviously the big news was hewould bring back existence who at thetime wasn't even playing like he'd beenkicked off ldl-c and shocks his reasonfor doing so was a very interesting onebecause four peoplenor if you go back even something like Ithink three or four months before Iactually saw an interview in the Frenchscene where someone asked shocks aboutexistence and he said something alongthe lines about you know I've got a lotof respect for him but you know likesomething online I I wouldn'tnecessarily want to play with him againor something like that you know I triedto imply you know I respect a lot thathe'd spent on you know dedicates hislife to the game and studying the gameyou know but for what obviously this iswhen shocks himself was an in-gameleader but the idea was like you know uhyou know my time playing with him isdone what made it very interesting inthis interview was shocks his reason forwhy he wanted to exist is to come backwas he said he himself had decided hedidn't want to be an in-game leaderanymore like taken away from hisindividual game and he said when helooked at the French scene they didn'thave any true leaders and so the thinghe appreciated my existence was he felthere was someone who's a true leader acaptain you know a guy who's gonna belike self the game self the practicemake sure we do these things correctlyand the idea would be you know socks canjust play again he could just be a starplayer we can be the shocks remember theI assume this this must have been aattractive idea to you it sounded greaton paper right yeah I mean I love thatsystems I worked with him in the past aswell he wasn't you to back in the dayand and the reason he got replaced ispretty much around the same reason hegot replaced or not replaced butreplaced as a leader in him leader nowwhich was there and he's he's leadingstyle in game is very it's very hardcoded and very organized way toomethodical very organized which indifferent meta games maybe we havewarming maybe not it definitely did workbut nowadays counter-strike is a lotabout being dynamic it's a lot aboutbeing flexible and and you know readingthe round halfway through the round notwith a plan at hand because somethingmay happen a smoke may happen and yetchanges your game right so so what theyrealized back then and what they realizeright now and I'm not saying it's theright or the wrong thing just what theythought is that existence in leading inthose moments mmmyou know was improvable and and and as aresult they thought that Richard couldlead better in those momentsso if I remember correctly I don't Idon't want to misquote this situationbut I think we tried to speak withexistence about stayin and leading thestrat side of things but then let shocksreach our lead within the round rightand I again if I remember correctly Ihope I'm not wrong here but I thinkthat's the moment where existence saidthat he isn't like that and and that hewants he sees himself as somebody wholeads the team also within the round sowe we did offer existence and theyoffered the possibility to be to takecare of the strats and to do the workoutside of the game and in game become aplayer this one were player or us or orhow do you call that like a support leada secondly whatever it's called yeahsecretary called wasn't yeah and and hedidn't like the idea so he decidedagainst playing if that meant that hewouldn't be leading in full okay so sothen yeah so it's a bit funky the factthat you know shock said that and thenhe got he still you know he got existingsaying and then he got existence on herebut the team got existence out and theteam as a whole because this was theteam as a whole not just him and but Ithink that this just goes to show howeverybody's trying to look howeverybody's trying to find their groundeverybody's trying to find who theyreally are and who they what they reallywant to become and how they want to goaround it and the fact that a few monthsago shows was saying one thing and nowhe does a different thing it's just an abyproduct of him trying to look for thekey to success so I I don't blame himyou know you know it also one thing thatI learned from Richard is that he's veryopen minded and actually there's acommon denominator in order in all ourstars in every game actually they areactually so open-minded that they theycan say right now I believe in God andtomorrow if theyfacts that tell them otherwise theywould say openly I don't believe in Godyou know it will be for 24 hours betweenstatements and if they were in fact withit and I think there's a commondenominator of winners actually andReacher has that so I upload that on oneon one hand again I don't know if theright call was to keep existence as fullteam leader because I don't know enoughabout the game or not um but but if youknow if four or five six people arepretty much on the same page in regardsto the same thing chances are thatthey're gonna be right more often thannot so you gotta make bets and it willhappen and then the the change ofexistence for Jax happened and yeah okayso hopefully see the other move whichitself had a controversial element wasthat Smith's would come back to the teamand he would play as an active playeragain obviously had been a player in g2before and had been there as a coach butobviously this situation in which he'dstopped being a pro player was kind oflike you know he was sick of criticismand his play hadn't been particularlygood and that's why he decided to goback to be in court so when this movehappenedunlike the existence woman who was somepeople in the community thought that'sworth the trial some people didn't Ihave to say it this was one that almostoverwhelmingly the public angle was likepeople didn't like it like peoplethought because unfortunately itconnects to another aspect which I wantyou to address in this which is not onlywas it a player coming back that theydidn't think was gonna be good enoughbut the implication was he's only comingback because shocks has the power tobring him back because shocks his shocksand everyone knows you want to beassociated with Skye's winner you knowif he says something you getting to giveit a shot you know but a lot of peoplefelt a little basically the only reasonSmith's gets back in this lineup itshocks on him back and then when theysaw how it went this year a lot ofpeople would probably say they thinkthey were right you knowwasn't that great didn't turn out to bethat great a lineup he yeah he has endedup being removed anywhere and probablythe the harshest part a lot this doesn'tmake it look good is that when Smith'sgot removed when he did that to itlonger there wasn't even any sentimentin there of sort of like no I shouldn'thave been removed you know I was areally good play he sort of even saidhimself so like yeah I almost look likeI don't other words in front of me butthe gist was sort like I never agreedwith it you sawmaybe wasn't right for me to be a proplayer so what would he say to thisangle like first of all if people areoutsiders was it just shocks whoconvinced you bring Smith's back was itthere was it a bad move no I made aslide a Papa no actually you'll besurprised everybody was on board withhaving a more supportive player butagain the fact that there are playersdoesn't mean they have the absolutetruth and many times those that comefrom outside and are not tunnel visionedinto the game they understand the basictruths and the basic truths aresomething you know it may be too simplebut many times more often than notthey're correct which is incounter-strike you kill the enemy youhit headshots they're dead they can'tkill you if you kill them firsttherefore is a very mechanicallyintensive game you can't get away withhaving a dead weight and I'm not goingto be the dead weight but it gets forthe sake of completion you can't getaway with having a dead weight thatcan't hit you at the level regardless ofwhat the position is you just can't sowhat happens is that if you intend towin majors if you intend to put a teamtogether that wins majors you needeverybody in the team to be you know top20 players in the world period you can'tget away with murderwe just can't and so what what happenedhere and what happened here is that theoverall skill of the team and again hesays my read on it the overall skill ofthe team wasn't good enough wasn't highenough to win those tournaments you canI have a theory and many you know everygame is different you know first two orthree months of a team you will see thetruth of the team I don't think you needto mesh together for a year I think Idon't think that's a thing you know youthe first few months you will understandwhether the team is gonna go places ornot you will see ever theory I oftentell people in counter-strike just myown observation that like my usualnumber I give as I say like once you'veplayed like three or four lands youpretty much know who that team is likeyou're not here scenario is just beentoo many miles yeah like you like theidea is if you played that manytournamentyou're not gonna get twice as good youknow you probably you've prepared youknow you played a lot of differentreports you had a few different chancesso maybe if you did badly one game itevens out you know but the odds aregetting much better after that probablynot that high and I think actually quitefrankly if you look at the lineups weretalking about the results show it yeahI'm I agree 100%and by the way that is true for mostgames as well I'm I can't tell you asingle game but that's not true so so weI could see very early on that yeah youknow it needs to run pop still he wasthe coach for a year but how much timecan you give you know times ticking youknow so so he knew that he was underpressure and we knew that he knew he wasunder pressure so he was a commonunderstanding was mutual sorryunderstanding that you know that at somepoint we probably could have to pull thetrigger and in this case it was g2 thatpulled the trigger the organization andit was actually the first time in thehistory of having the French team thatwe essentially said okay we think thatwe have to take over in regards to thisdecision we need to change we need to weneed to we need a big change and thatincluded getting jax and lucky into theteam there was actually the organizationso it was the organization of presumablycoaching staff etcetera more than theplayers who wanted this move them yescorrect so the players would have walkedkept the same lineup and just kept goingto the next I think at some point theywould have said so here's the thing likeunless something really remarkablyterrible happens like a really baddiscussion after a loss or like a richsomething that burns bridges it isreally hard to make a change of thiscaliber between players that have knowneach other for so many years it isreally hard something really brutalbrutal has to happen and that's why Itold you is why players can't have thecontrol of a team they just can'tbecause these things yes you know becomethe problem well I mean if it will thegreat thing about this is you see bothangles of it so before when you want alineup flop here but you want to keepthe car because internally they're allfighting and then when you offer lineuply as the outside of yourlike this lineup isn't that good thatGod not a nut scritch leave it likeagain the players if they have thechoice they'll make a decision sometimesopposite to you hmmyeah that's correct and one of theissues of challenges of Counter Strikeis that you play so many games so manymaps there at some point one player willtop rank and then he may have a goodgame right and then you may judge theplayer on that one good game or that onegood B and that is the wrong approach Iam a big believer I am a again is thisthe simplicity many times wins I am abig believer in just looking at the HLTV rating I mean there is a reason Imean it's not everything and I agreewith you it's not everything but theAsian TV rating tells a lot about aplayer it tells whether the player isable to pull he'll pull up his weighteven in a bad day you see hisconsistency across different games yousee how whether he tilts on land or notyou see many things it's a veryimportant kind of thing and it is nocoincidence then more often than not theteam the players that are replaced inany team happened to have a worse hltvrate than the rest again so and again isthis is the New Age thinking of being ahipster that you have to be like or noritual to be relatives or knoweverything you know not everything isscoring goals well you know it's noteverything but this is a damn big partof it sure so so yeah all you know weknew that in Smith and we gave a cleardeadline as well by the wayit was a clear deadline and and and bythat but when the deadline wasapproaching he was just very clear thatthis was not gonna work so we spoke withhim and and it happened he wasincredibly gracious about it and he's afantastic guy incredibly and so it hurtto do this but we felt like it needed tobe done now did we hit the key the weheat I guess is what the next questioncomes and they did do we think that wehave the team that can we majors youasked me right now and I sayI don't know but from what I know whichis not too much okay I I don't knowenough nearly enough I think I would sayno um but I guess time will only tellokay right on this particular lineupthat you had just before you made thisrecent roster move a question I justI've just alluded to basically thecharacterization I'm going to give nowone of the really bizarre things aboutit is that one area shocks was entirelycorrect with is the idea of like anotherreason he said that he wanted to bringexistence in and he wanted to have likea real captain and change the teamdynamic was because in the old the superteam lineup he saw that there was allthese problems and things were neverperfect ever and there's always somepeople were either bad form or somepeople were like disagreeing with theway things were done or waiting to seeif they could change that when he wantedto have a team where everyone's on thesame page and it's like team harmonybasically all the things that havenothing to do with like inside the gameit's more like you know the teamenvironment and how we practice us nownow from everything I've heard this isone the interesting things for a teamthat actually again if you look at theresults this lineup didn't do very welllike they had maybe like one or yeahmaybe like one decent result and eventhen you know maybe not as good as youthink so you look at the results therewere fairly underwhelming of some ofthese players that were very bad in thecontext of their careers you know butthe bizarre thing is everything I everheard internally was actually very goodlike for example even towards the endthey didn't seem like a team that washaving like massive fights or somethingthey really did do the practice foranyone doesn't know they did the bootcamps they did the scrims they tried todo the strike strategies they tried toimplement everything what would he sayto that because I mean that's kind ofbizarre in itself right you know there'sall these French teams in history theynever get along this one seems like theenvironment was good but the play withthe other environment was was was good Iagree but again I think environment is alittle bit I mean I seen psychologicalenvironment is a little bit overoverrated in video gaming competition atleast and in traditional sports I knowthis to be the case functionally and sohaving good moodbetween each other outside of the gameit helps more often than not if it'sgoodbut it doesn't destroy the team moreoften than not if it's not perfect andso this is a bonus right well the way Ithink about training is the and again Ilike 300 players have gone 3d - and ifwe call my professional career as aplayer I don't know maybe 360 playerslike with I mean I've dealt with ingeneral and I've come to realize onevery clear thing many many playersaround the worldtrain 14 hours a day play 14 hours a dayand they enjoy the game some some ofthem cannot become professional playersbecause their their genes are just notgood enoughthat could happen and especially in agame that millions and millions ofplayers played and many of the playersthat don't reach the highest level theydon't reach the highest level notbecause they don't work hard enough butbecause the attitude is not perfectattitude is everythingand when you go into boot camp and whenyou really train very hard and you'relike doing deathmatch very often in etcit's it's not that it is not the factthat you're doing that match it is thisis how you're doing this match thatmatters it's not the fact that the factis you're screaming everybody screamingprolly as many hours you knoweverybody's coming this amount of hoursapproximately it's it's about how youtake those screams how seriously do youtake them how much do you focus onlearning how proactive value in voicecomes are you taking it like a you knowthe closest possible to an official gameand you know how much information areyou giving out how much are you feelingmistakes in a scream the attitude in myeyes is the most important thing and Idon't think that Delta was perfectbecause if it was perfect then it wouldhave shown in official results moreoften at least it is you know whenyou're back at home when you're havingthat extra hour free what do you do withthat hourare you thinking counter-strike are youplayingare you watching things are you watchingthe tournament or are you just playingGod of War or whatever the [ __ ] it isand I don't know if any people gottawork with you no conversation and or areyou units are outside just eating an icecream and you see these young guys andlike Ian and Jax are exactly this typeof guys actually I know Jax is older butthey are they're watching like they'reare communicating what's up and watchingtournaments like have you seen that [ __ ]or whatever you know they command theteamspeak whatever it is and theycommand the game that's being played byother two teams they breathe Connorstrike this is what ultimately will makeup for a winning team that everybodybreathes the game and of course on topof that that they're just very good atthe game of course but if you lackeither good genes or you like goodattitude will that will be qualifieddisqualify you to be a winning team soto answer your question or I don't knowif it was a question but to comment onthat yeah I think that the the overallattitude could have potentially beenbetter and but I don't think that's thereason why we didn't perform I think asa team just wasn't good enough so whataspect and this is something where sofor example since people I'm a greatadmirer of existence is career peoplewill know I was a player someone whohoped that this could be a good lineupbut one of the reasons I even said fromday one when I heard this lineup game itwas okay I also had my skepticism forexample if you have some like existenceand you have Smith's come out ofretirement if you have these players youmight have a firepower problem in theteam since I think most peopletechnology at the end was an issue butone of the problems I had was the theangle I said that could have offset itwas yeah but you off Shox and Ken yeslike if these two players get to thelevel that we know they have in the pastand this isn't like you know saying nowI thought what if get right was as goodhe was five years ago no we're talkingabout even just a year or two ago theseare players who repeatedly have gottento the top and even if they have youknow six months where they're not thatgood they can come back they've justdone it so many times if you'd have goneback to the end of 2016 that yearthe team was pretty good and it shockedus like the star player and he was I'mall these amazing individualperformances if you just said at the endof that year that g2 will have two yearscoming up where Kenny s and shocksplayer together people would be likeholy [ __ ] I'm so excited this is gonnabe amazingthese guys are gonna tear it up andobviously in neither lineup did theyever both kind of get this kind of starstirs you know they were never both onthat that level that you would want tosee if you were the fan like if you weremaking this is like the the movie withlike Arnold Schwarzenegger and SylvesterStallone you know you wouldn't want towatch the movie and then stuff that'stoo small and just plays some like[ __ ] like Pierre who brings him acoffee at the beginning like where washe above the worst [ __ ] annales youknow it's the best analogy I keep likewell where was that guy I thought theseboth guys were in the movie you knowlike it must be a bit it must be a bitbittersweet looking back on these twoyears now and and that just never workedout yeah it definitely was it's like yousay you're put in literally Tom Cruiseand Will Smith in in the same movie youknow and and it is not working out theor hasn't work out to the level that youwanted it to work out now our hope andand hope is a hey I hate that word ourour our goal is that it ends up workingout and that's why we're tryingeverything as you can see around is toplayers to make it work because he hasto work his jokes on Kenny he has towork that's what everybody else toexpect him and wanting to happen and sowe're in the same page right here's aquestion that is one that's a purelyhypothetical one so one of the thingsthat also upsets some of the people Ithink is the reason why people were veryharsh about the last g2 lineup is notjust because it wasn't doing very welland it had players like existences Smithso you know what different times thatthe communities be very critical of butmore importantly it meant that air pecksand enbe care was sat on the bench theyweren't playing for anyone for monthsand months and then obviously with theway that news is reported people heardthese reports like cloud 9 maybeslooking into and we care I think peopleknow by now Mouse sports for example wasinterested in an air pecks you knowthere was lineups that were out thereinquiring about these players lineupsthat needed players potentially maybeeven needed players just like these wasit from the g2 side of thingsis there a reason these playnever got sold at that time it wasn'tuntil the vitality lineup they left likefor example was there a part of you wasthinking these are like an insurancepolicy like let's see if this lineupworks out this time and then maybe I canput one of the players back in oh youknow the majors coming up maybe one theplayers I'll swap in there out was wasthis actually part the reasoning orwould you actually have solved theseplayers of people had given you a goodoffer yeah so um we would have sold theplayers if a good effort would come andI would offer a reasonable offer noteven a reasonable offeryes a fair not even fair it's a decentsomeone there is people heard that coreof like you know the buyout say I haveno idea I think no [ __ ] idea wherethat thing came fromokay I've no idea and in on the otherhand I mean FF probably transferred 70players in my lifemaybe they buy and sell maybe more thanthat like you know when I negotiate wheneverybody negotiates the [ __ ] like youjust negotiate like what is you knowit's a negotiation is the word isself-explanatory so when anybody goesand try and once a of our players andthey're on the market then I want tomake sure they're sold the market priceat fair market price right and if it'snot possible to be sort of firm marketprice because nobody wants them or notmany teams want them then you lower theprice and then you lower it until thepoint where they go for free you knowthat that's not the way it works rightand at no point we want to keep themunder contract I've never done that to aplayer and you never say never because Idon't know what's gonna happen tomorrowbut I very well know that it's very lowchances that this ever happened and thatthey would have to be something reallyunexpectedly I mean I expected that Ican't wrap my head around right now forme to do something like that there's novalue for methey still on a payroll I have to paythem I'm losing money they're notplaying for me so why would I keep themyou know people have to sometimes againthe truth many timesthe very simple answer you know the verysimple answer is what is the incentivefor a team to keep a player for yearsunder payroll if you can't use him andit was very clear that we couldn't usethat anymore any of both because the theteam that we chose just did not want toplay with them and vice-versaI guess so yeah honestly I hatecommenting on rumors because they'reeither isolated in context andeverything is out of context I have noidea where they read stuff from with thegods information from and a party thatintends to buy a player and intends toput pressure in order to get the playerwill very often and I have seen thismany times leak some news even if evenif wrong proposed it in order to inorder to get the upper hand so becausethe player becomes nerve it gets nervousand then the player asks but is thistrue is it's not true and then you areyou have then you're in a defensiveposition because you have to defendyourself right and this is a very knownstrategy in training player traits andit happens in traditional sports too andso let's just not let there's no commenton rumorsI like facts I like and I like I hateabstract [ __ ] you know okay like factsand the fact is that they ended upgetting sold out for what I consideredwas everybody considered to be a fairprice one of the aspects of this lineupyou alluded to it earlier as to why thisplayer change was made was was it justthe players was g2 it's that there's acoaching staff now obviously you broughtin Malick to be the courts a few monthsago I like Manik my doing Greg a is thisa move where cuz when he okay when hegot brought in some people mightcynically have said all like this is amove by the way that actually some walkswill do where like if the players don'twant to make a change but you got to dosomething because fans don't like thatyou lose in you say right get a coachbecause you know we could say that we'vedone something that gives us a few moremonths well work around you coach now hehas tolearning's sounds as though thoughyou're actually giving malik like somelevel of control right if you canrepresent recommend some of the playersthat are coming in some of the cuts sohow is this shifted kind of what the theplan is going forwards yeah so we arejust going to use the same system thatwe use in other games with success againwe have 12 teams right nowall 12 teams except counter-strike arekicking ass there's no coincidence youknow and we have full control over the11 teams now is when in collar strikethe players realize that this is thecase so we now have full control overthe team so there's a support staff thatnow has a say and we have both niak andMalik who follow the team daily and knowwhat's missing and know what's you knowwhat's wrong what's right simultaneouslywe use the help of Shox and pretty muchevery other player but especially Shoxto get guidance on the feeling right ofhow the team feels in-game and thingslike that and ultimately you have Jamieand Danny which are head of talent andhead of gaming operations in g2 as wellas myself to take the final decision andthat's how that has been the case eversince Jax and I mean the moment wedecided to bring in Jax and lucky so ifpeople know the context behind a lot ofthe things we've discussed here havebeen problems that have existed longbefore GTA V needs to be problems of theFrench scene where the players decidedall the roster moves I have no ideawhat's up boss the French mafia man the[ __ ] is going on you know it's it's meagainit's competition just just going gameand just get you know get together withthe best players and make it work it'snot that complicated you know but yeahit's the yeah it's the French cultureit's a very emotional culture as well itis what it is does obviously with thismy wife's branch of son as well asFrench so III know what I'm talkingaboutdoes this mean though that like you haveto stay committed to the French scenelike have you actually ever suggested tothe players or beetle to theyes I did he's plenty of times and I amI hope one day they say let's do thisyou know because I mean I built thefirst successful international team andthat is factual there were otherinternational teams before incounter-strike but not as successful asg2 was with with Danny's reign MakeleleFox and who else in in AC module camebefore they came and and I loved everysecond of building that team you knowbecause it was man this is mathematicsyou have access to a bigger pool oftalent you know and when you have accessto a bigger pool of talent then youundeniably will have access to betterplayers more often than not and in thethe downside of this is internationalteams tend to have communicationproblems because English is not nativelanguage and in Counter Strike this issuper important so I think there is athere's a chance that I'm wrong inpushing for an international team orhaving pushed in the past for aninternational team and there's chanceI'm wrong but what I have seen with you- back in the day we got this thisinternational team together just pickingup players I was buying them here andthere and it was also very fun for me Isaw that it workedso maybe counter-strike is right now ina position where international teams arejust very very hard to pull - the babycome and legacy team just like astrategist today but because actually ifyou think about it like faze clanmousesports like all these teamsenglish-speaking teams they aresuccessful but it's not a legendary teamyou know so there hasn't been a singletime where an international teamenglish-speaking international team justbroke records right so I don't know ifthis isrikon actually I I don't know enough togive you an answer by oh I honestly froman organization standpoint is alwaysbest if you have an international teambecause you cater to many differentcountries and that in terms of brandingis really good and in terms of buildinga fan base is really really good and ifthey win even better but I do think thatclosing yourself to a single regiondefinitely has comes and that is theamount of people available is just manytimes not not that great in line withwhat you said earlier are we to take itthat this current lineup of g2 also haslike you know a time frame and sort ofsome set expectations and if theyobviously your kit tell us what it'sspecifically our but like if they'recomplex performances then you know theycontinue otherwise you review it againand then placement is that like a systemlike this in place for the currentlineup no not in the sense of this is adeadline and this is the goals these arethe goals but yes in the sense ofthere's a constant feedback loop aconstant feedback between each playerand things support stuff and also theorganization so all the players thatknow they are they need to play betterknow that they need to play better andthat they're being looked at veryclosely so that is a position that bythe way no French team has ever had inthree four years like no player wasbeing told before the facthey you have to improve because we'relooking at this like this this has to bebetter you know so for the first timethe players know what's going on intheir careers they can adapt accordinglythey can spend you know some of ourplayers by the way are spending money ontheir own personal coaches for you knowthey spend time with them in-game andthey pay for add themselves by the waylike they you know so this is adifferent shift in mentality and rightnow we are sowing and hopefully in thefuture we can reap the benefits ofwhat's going on at the moment in theteam for the first time I am content I'mnot content actually content is theright word I'm satisfied with the typeof structureher system and work structureessentially right that we have in a teamso a few months ago there was some newsthat said that some of the players inthe team had signed new contracts hadresigned with the authorization for afew years and the detail of the newsthat everyone was surprised by was itsaid that Kenny s was the one playerdidn't choose to sign a new contract goforwards and obviously people fromoutside since the results of the teamwas a very good start speculating whatyou know does this mean he wants toleave or is he being cynical and he sortof thinking like well I'll wait and seeinto my contract ends you know where Iam because again as you said before Imean whenever it shocks or Kelly yeslike for people who are newer fans likethat alone its justification as to whythese guys can kind of bear it a littlebit differently other people becauseeveryone on the scene looks and sees thename it goes is Kenny s like of courseyou'd want to play with this guy or ofcourse this guy will be a tee a guy thatpeople will build teams around at somepoint in his grist or can you give usany insight into that like why did thewhole team not just sign again on thatyeah again is this out of a room or takeit becomes out of proportion people makeassumptions and then you know peoplestart thinking oh it's because hedoesn't like the team whatever you knowand III can't get into the into thedetails of it that it's all noise theycan it will be with us for a long timeokay right before we wrap up the thecsgo part and obviously there'll be adifferent interview this motley legendswhat would you say as a final message topeople who've who are fans of the g2 CScore team because obviously this yearone of the differences in the past isyou I've been very vocal yourself onTwitter in fact some people I saw somepro players even got a bit upset whenyou made that tweet was sort of like youknow these results are unacceptable likeI promise will change thing some playersthought you know maybe you shouldn't putpressure on the the team publicly atthat what would your message be forpeople who have followed g2 for a longtime would have been underwhelmed bysome of the last lineups yeah I mean youknow I you know me for many years nowand I in one thing is that I've come tolearn over the years that you you gottabe as transparent as humanly possiblefirst of all and have as much fun ashumanly possible as well and and I doboth I think really well so um when Imade that tweet there was backlash fromsome people in the community whichhonestly I don't I don't care about Ireally can't care less and I'm notalways right I don't know if that tweetis right or wrong but it's the way I amand I embrace it and it has worked forme over this for the last 14 yearscompletely successful player in twodifferent games and now leading one ofthe best organizations on earth so Ithink it's workingum but internally that actually had alot of positive impact actually thattweet had a lot of positive impacteverybody realized oh [ __ ] this isactually we are actually heldaccountable you know [ __ ] like we haveto win you know it's not like we'regetting paid yeahwhatever it is half a million dollars ayear or whatever and and we can justchill no there's no chill you can getkicked everybody can be kicked know andthat should be the case and all of youplayers want everybody in your team tobe able to get kicked because you wantyour players around you to be the bestthey can be and if they can't be thebest then they have to be replacedbecause otherwise they're damaging youand the rest of the teammates and that'ssomething that the players under stoodout of that tweet we had a follow-upmeeting in New York listen now one hourand a half or something like thatmeeting which we recorded with Sun andeverything but we decided not to uploadit we recorded it mostly for internaluse to know exactly what was spoken andbut then at some point we toyed with theidea of releasing the content but someplayers were not happy with that so wewere okay with that it would have beengreat because I like full transparencyand people would have seen what it islike you know the background of aneSports team when things don't go welland the kind of content I also like isvery candid but because not everythingwas nice it was discussionsyou know and I was getting mad at somepoint which I'm never mind I know I'malways making jokes and [ __ ] like thatbut then I was mad at some point youknow and then they they you know Iremember there was a discussion and withwith with Edward you know and and andnow and I was saying you know like yeahyou have to be better you knowthis is factually nowadays Connornowadays in contract you know and andand he was saying yeah man but I youknow it was a coach for a year and Isaid yeah that's the point rightI totally understand where you're comingfrombut you still have to be better you knowand and I'm holding accountable thewhole team for a certain competitivesuccess and holding you guys to veryhigh standards and what happens then isthat if those donors are not nowherenear met then we have to do somethingand these conversations are hard to havebut it might they do not behave so thattweet evoked an internal conversationdiscussion that I think was reallyreally good for every player actuallythey understood their career theyunderstood that you know the reason whythey are contract players theyunderstood what their job is and andthey understood that money is a bonusthat they should actually breathing himat all times so now why would I tell tothe fans that you know the g2 fans inCounter Strike if if we have any leftafter this catastrophictwo years we do you're great guys forthe first time I'm actually seeing ashift in the way we work in the way wethink about the game and in the overallenergy of the team I'm seeing playersinvesting in themselves not onlyresources but also more time I'm seeingeverybody gets caring more about theirjob at anything this is a job and I'mseeing that the support staff has tohave increased their level of ambitionin regards to competitive results theplayers have done the same they justthey were here in a building in AbuDhabiladies follow the law students fanaticand I'm pretty sure everybody's reallyangry right nowand that's a good thing because theyturn a minister to your two top tieredthree tournament whatever there's onlyone known team which was fnatic in whichwe wouldn't we shouldn't have lostagainst them so everybody's noses andthat's something that makes me happybecause it's the first step now I don'tknow if the lineup will stay the way itis today because I don't have a hammeron Oracle but um but I know for certainthat the core of the team is now set andeverybody understands what their job isthe culture is the right one and it's amatter of time until gurus come thisvideo was kindly supported by DeanTanglers Andres snazzle WesterlundGardner Wilson Ali G Tobias Berlusconinet do GG James Harding Kyla HarrisTravis grab Daniel your Deneuve and asalways a special thanks goes out toJerky's minion would you like to suggesta topic or a guest for some of myupcoming content perhaps you want to askme a question in my monthly AMA do youwant to see some teasers see who's gonnabe the next guest on one of my shoresmaybe you want to take part in anesports discussion with me well put yourmoney where your mouth is and join theschool loominatee today at the patreonlink in the description box below